Benthic microbial communities of coastal terrestrial and ice

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TitleBenthic microbial communities of coastal terrestrial and ice shelf Antarctic meltwater pondsAbstractThe numerous perennial meltwater ponds distributed throughout Antarctica represent diverse and productive ecosystems central to the ecological functioning of the surrounding ultra oligotrophic environment. The dominant taxa in the pond benthic communities have been well described however, little is known regarding their regional dispersal and local drivers to community structure. The benthic microbial communities of 12 meltwater ponds in the McMurdo Sound of Antarctica were investigated to examine variation between pond microbial communities and their biogeography. Geochemically comparable but geomorphologically distinct ponds were selected from Bratina Island (ice shelf) and Miers Valley (terrestrial) (<40 km between study sites), and community structure within ponds was compared using DNA fingerprinting and pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons. More than 85% of total sequence reads were shared between pooled benthic communities at different locations (OTU0.05), which in combination with favorable prevailing winds suggests aeolian regional distribution. Consistent with previous findings Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes were the dominant phyla representing over 50% of total sequences; however, a large number of other phyla (21) were also detected in this ecosystem. Although dominant Bacteria were ubiquitous between ponds, site and local selection resulted in heterogeneous community structures and with more than 45% of diversity being pond specific. Potassium was identified as the most significant contributing factor to the cosmopolitan community structure and aluminum to the location unique community based on a BEST analysis (SpearmanÅ› correlation coefficient of 0.632 and 0.806, respectively). These results indicate that the microbial communities in meltwater ponds are easily dispersed regionally and that the local geochemical environment drives the ponds community structure. Copyright 2015 Archer, McDonald, Herbold, Lee and Cary.AcknowledgementsThis research was supported by the International Centre for Terrestrial Antarctic Research, the University of Waikato, Antarctica New Zealand and New Zealand Post. Logistical support was provided by Antarctica New Zealand through their postgraduate research program. Supported for this research came from the New Zealand Marsden Fund (UOW1003) to SC and CL, the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute (NZARI2013-7) to SC and CL, and the National Science Foundation (ANT 0739648 and 0944560) to SC.Funding Details0944560, NSF, National Science Foundation; ANT 0739648, NSF, National Science Foundation

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1st AuthorArcher, S.AuthorArcher, S.McDonald, I.Herbold, C.Lee, C.Cary, C.Year2015JournalFrontiers in MicrobiologyVolume6NumberMAYDOI10.3389/fmicb.2015.00485URLhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/recor.....0ba8b41673d136633b987c879KeywordsaluminumpotassiumRNA 16S, AntarcticaArticleBacteroidetescommunity structurecontrolled studyDNA extractionDNA fingerprintinggeochemical analysisgeographical variation (species)high throughput sequencinghydraulic conductivityisland biogeographymass spectrometrymicrobial communitymicrobial diversitynonhumanpolymerase chain reactionProteobacteriapyrosequencingwater temperature, BacteroidetesProteobacteria, rank5Author KeywordsAntarcticBenthicBiogeographyMicrobialPond

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TypeArticleCitationArcher, S., McDonald, I., Herbold, C., Lee, C. and Cary, C. (2015). Benthic microbial communities of coastal terrestrial and ice shelf {Antarctic} meltwater ponds. Frontiers in Microbiology, 6(MAY) IdentifierArcher2015Relevancerank5

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Cary, C.