Rapid turnover of ciliate community members in New England tide pools

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 80:43-54 (2017) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/ame01839 Rapid turnover of ciliate community members in New England tide pools Mary Badger1, Sarah J. Tucker1,3, Jean-David Grattepanche1, Laura A. Katz1,2,* 1Department of Biological Sciences, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts 01063, USA 2Program in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA 3Present address: Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Department of Marine Biology, University of Hawaii, Kaneohe, Hawaii 96744, USA *Corresponding author: lkatz@smith.edu ABSTRACT: The rocky intertidal zone represents a dynamic habitat marked by considerable species richness, which has been well-documented for invertebrates and macroalgae. This high biodiversity exists in the context of extreme fluctuations in abiotic factors such as temperature, salinity and pH that occur during each tidal cycle. Despite these attributes, few studies have focused on microbial diversity in tide pools, including analyses of the ciliate communities that are the focus of this study. We investigated the spatial and temporal distributions of ciliate species across the intertidal environment at sites in Maine and Connecticut, USA. Our study used a DNA fingerprinting technique, denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), which allows for genetic analyses of abundant community members. We investigated how ciliate diversity changed across several spatiotemporal scales: (1) between the open ocean and tide pools, (2) among different tide pools at varying distances from the low tide mark and (3) at differing times within a tidal cycle. In addition, we examined the differences between active and non-active members in these extreme environments by investigating diversity of both ribosomal DNA and RNA. In both Maine and Connecticut, we found abundant ciliate taxa that are either rare or absent in the open ocean, and that appear to quickly dominate tide pools once they are isolated from the open ocean. We also found that ciliate distributions within the tide pool community are complex and variable across spatial and temporal scales. KEY WORDS: Microbial diversity · Ephemeral habitats · Biogeography · Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis · Extreme environments Full text in pdf format Supplementary material PreviousNextCite this article as: Badger M, Tucker SJ, Grattepanche JD, Katz LA (2017) Rapid turnover of ciliate community members in New England tide pools. Aquat Microb Ecol 80:43-54. https://doi.org/10.3354/ame01839 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in AME Vol. 80, No. 1. Online publication date: August 11, 2017 Print ISSN: 0948-3055; Online ISSN: 1616-1564 Copyright © 2017 Inter-Research.