Wenxue Wu, Chih-Hao Hsieh, Ramiro Logares, Jay T Lennon, Hongbin Liu
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Along the river-sea continuum, microorganisms are directionally dispersed by water flow while being exposed to strong environmental gradients. To compare the two assembly mechanisms that may strongly and differently influence metacommunity dynamics, namely homogenizing dispersal and heterogeneous selection, we characterized the total (16S rRNA gene) and putatively active (16S rRNA transcript) bacterial communities in the Pearl River-South China Sea Continuum, during the wet (summer) and dry (winter) seasons using high-throughput sequencing. Moreover, well-defined sampling was conducted by including freshwater, oligohaline, mesohaline, polyhaline, and marine habitats. We found that heterogeneous selection exceeded homogenizing dispersal in both the total and active fractions of bacterial communities in two seasons. However, homogeneous selection was prevalent (the dominant except in active bacterial communities during summer), which was primarily due to the bacterial communities' tremendous diversity (associated with high rarity) and our specific sampling design. In either summer or winter seasons, homogeneous and heterogeneous selection showed higher relative importance in total and active communities, respectively, implying that the active bacteria were more responsive to environmental gradients than were the total bacteria. In summary, our findings provide insight into the assembly of bacterial communities in natural ecosystems with high spatial connectivity and environmental heterogeneity.
期刊介绍:
FEMS Microbiology Ecology aims to ensure efficient publication of high-quality papers that are original and provide a significant contribution to the understanding of microbial ecology. The journal contains Research Articles and MiniReviews on fundamental aspects of the ecology of microorganisms in natural soil, aquatic and atmospheric habitats, including extreme environments, and in artificial or managed environments. Research papers on pure cultures and in the areas of plant pathology and medical, food or veterinary microbiology will be published where they provide valuable generic information on microbial ecology. Papers can deal with culturable and non-culturable forms of any type of microorganism: bacteria, archaea, filamentous fungi, yeasts, protozoa, cyanobacteria, algae or viruses. In addition, the journal will publish Perspectives, Current Opinion and Controversy Articles, Commentaries and Letters to the Editor on topical issues in microbial ecology.
- Application of ecological theory to microbial ecology
- Interactions and signalling between microorganisms and with plants and animals
- Interactions between microorganisms and their physicochemical enviornment
- Microbial aspects of biogeochemical cycles and processes
- Microbial community ecology
- Phylogenetic and functional diversity of microbial communities
- Evolutionary biology of microorganisms