Salt marsh sediment diversity : a test of the variability of the rare biosphere among environmental replicates

View/ Open
Date
2011-12-17Author
Bowen, Jennifer L.
Concept link
Morrison, Hilary G.
Concept link
Hobbie, John E.
Concept link
Sogin, Mitchell L.
Concept link
Metadata
Show full item recordCitable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/5599As published
https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2012.47Abstract
Much of the phylogenetic diversity in microbial systems arises from rare taxa that
comprise the long tail of taxon rank distribution curves. This vast diversity presents a
challenge to testing hypotheses about the effects of perturbations on microbial community
composition because within site variability of the rare taxa may be sufficiently large that it
would require a prohibitive degree of sequencing to discern differences among samples. In
this study we used pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA tags to examine the diversity and local
scale variability of salt marsh sediment bacteria. Our goal was to determine whether
pyrosequencing could produce similar patterns in community composition among replicate
environmental samples from the same location. We hypothesized that repeated sampling
from the same location would produce different snapshots of the rare community due to
incomplete sequencing of the taxonomically rich rare biosphere. The concern was that
variation resulting from incomplete sequencing could mask subtle community shifts caused
by environmental perturbations. Our data indicate that salt marsh sediments contain a
remarkably diverse array of bacterial taxa and, in contrast to our hypothesis, repeated
sampling from within the same site produces reliably similar patterns in bacterial
community composition, even among rare organisms. These results demonstrate that deep
sequencing of 16s tags is well suited to distinguish site-specific similarities and differences
among rare taxa and is a valuable tool for hypothesis testing in microbial ecology.
Description
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in The ISME Journal 6 (2012): 2014–2023, doi:10.1038/ismej.2012.47.
Collections
Suggested Citation
Preprint: Bowen, Jennifer L., Morrison, Hilary G., Hobbie, John E., Sogin, Mitchell L., "Salt marsh sediment diversity : a test of the variability of the rare biosphere among environmental replicates", 2011-12-17, https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2012.47, https://hdl.handle.net/1912/5599Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Marsh consumer diversity effects on multifunctionality from experiments conducted by manipulating the presence of crabs, snails, and fungus in Spartina plots on Sapelo Island, Georgia
Hensel, Marc; Silliman, Brian (Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). Contact: bco-dmo-data@whoi.edu, 2019-06-12)The effect of consumer diversity on the ecosystem functioning of salt marshes on Sapelo Island, Georgia. For a complete list of measurements, refer to the full dataset description in the supplemental file 'Dataset_des ... -
Nutrient enrichment induces dormancy and decreases diversity of active bacteria in salt marsh sediments
Kearns, Patrick J.; Angell, John H.; Howard, Evan M.; Deegan, Linda A.; Stanley, Rachel H. R.; Bowen, Jennifer L. (Nature Publishing Group, 2016-09-26)Microorganisms control key biogeochemical pathways, thus changes in microbial diversity, community structure and activity can affect ecosystem response to environmental drivers. Understanding factors that control the ... -
Heterotrophic Archaea dominate sedimentary subsurface ecosystems off Peru
Biddle, Jennifer F.; Lipp, Julius S.; Lever, Mark A.; Lloyd, Karen G.; Sorensen, Ketil B.; Anderson, Rika E.; Fredricks, Helen F.; Elvert, Marcus; Kelly, Timothy J.; Schrag, Daniel P.; Sogin, Mitchell L.; Brenchley, Jean E.; Teske, Andreas; House, Christopher H.; Hinrichs, Kai-Uwe (National Academy of Sciences, 2006-02-27)Studies of deeply buried, sedimentary microbial communities and associated biogeochemical processes during Ocean Drilling Program Leg 201 showed elevated prokaryotic cell numbers in sediment layers where methane is consumed ...