Marine bacterial, archaeal and eukaryotic diversity and community structure on the continental shelf of the western Antarctic Peninsula

Abstract

AME Aquatic Microbial Ecology Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials AME 73:107-121 (2014) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/ame01703 Marine bacterial, archaeal and eukaryotic diversity and community structure on the continental shelf of the western Antarctic Peninsula Catherine M. Luria1,2, Hugh W. Ducklow3, Linda A. Amaral-Zettler1,2,4,* 1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA 2The Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA 3Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA 4Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA *Corresponding author: amaral@mbl.edu ABSTRACT: The classic view of polar ocean foodwebs emphasizes large predators sustained by energy and material flow through short, efficient diatom-krill-predator food chains. Bacterial activity is generally low in cold polar waters compared to that at lower latitudes. This view appears to be changing, with new studies of microbial foodwebs in Arctic and Antarctic oceans. We characterized bacterial, archaeal, and eukaryotic community diversity and composition from 2 depths (near surface and below the euphotic zone) at 4 sites, including the inshore and offshore, and north and south corners of a sampling grid along the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula (WAP). We detected up to 2-fold higher richness in microbial eukaryotes at surface and deep inshore northern stations as compared to southern stations, but offshore northern and southern stations revealed either no trend or higher richness at depth in the south. In contrast, bacterial and archaeal richness showed no significant differences either inshore or offshore at northern versus southern extents, but did vary with depth. Archaea were virtually absent in summer surface waters, but were present in summer deep and winter surface samples. Overall, winter bacterial and archaeal assemblages most closely resembled summer sub-euphotic zone assemblages, reflecting well-established seasonal patterns of water column turnover and stratification that result in an isolated layer of ‘winter water’ below the euphotic zone. Inter-domain heterotroph-phototroph interactions were evident from network analysis. The WAP is among the most rapidly warming regions on earth. Our results provide a baseline against which future change in microbial communities may be assessed. KEY WORDS: Antarctica · MIRADA-LTERS · Palmer LTER · Pyrosequencing · V6 · V9 · Microbial oceanography Full text in pdf format Supplementary material PreviousNextCite this article as: Luria CM, Ducklow HW, Amaral-Zettler LA (2014) Marine bacterial, archaeal and eukaryotic diversity and community structure on the continental shelf of the western Antarctic Peninsula. Aquat Microb Ecol 73:107-121. https://doi.org/10.3354/ame01703 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in AME Vol. 73, No. 2. Online publication date: October 02, 2014 Print ISSN: 0948-3055; Online ISSN: 1616-1564 Copyright © 2014 Inter-Research.