Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © American Society for Microbiology, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Society for Microbiology for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology 70 (2004): 1494-1505, doi:10.1128/AEM.70.3.1494-1505.2004.
Description:
Shifts in bacterioplankton community composition along the salinity gradient of the Parker River estuary
and Plum Island Sound, in northeastern Massachusetts, were related to residence time and bacterial community
doubling time in spring, summer, and fall seasons. Bacterial community composition was characterized
with denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of PCR-amplified 16S ribosomal DNA. Average community
doubling time was calculated from bacterial production ([14C]leucine incorporation) and bacterial
abundance (direct counts). Freshwater and marine populations advected into the estuary represented a large
fraction of the bacterioplankton community in all seasons. However, a unique estuarine community formed at
intermediate salinities in summer and fall, when average doubling time was much shorter than water residence
time, but not in spring, when doubling time was similar to residence time. Sequencing of DNA in DGGE bands
demonstrated that most bands represented single phylotypes and that matching bands from different samples
represented identical phylotypes. Most river and coastal ocean bacterioplankton were members of common
freshwater and marine phylogenetic clusters within the phyla Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria.
Estuarine bacterioplankton also belonged to these phyla but were related to clones and isolates from several
different environments, including marine water columns, freshwater sediments, and soil.
Description:
This work was supported by two grants from the National Science
Foundation (LTER grant OCE-9726921 and Microbial Observatory
grant MCB-9977897) and the NASA Astrobiology Institute (cooperative
agreement NCC2-1054 to M.L.S.).
Keywords:
Bacterioplankton community composition
;
Parker River estuary
;
Plum Island Sound
;
Proteobacteria
;
Bacteroidetes
;
Actinobacteria
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
3341462 bytes
Format:
application/pdf
