Microbial Communities in Marine Environments

A special issue of Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Microbiology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2021) | Viewed by 6322

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Laboratory for Precipitation Processes, Division of Materials Chemistry, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
Interests: ecosystem ecology; biodiversity; community ecology; aquatic ecology; marine environment; ecology; microbiology; marine biology; marine ecology
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

More than 70% of the planet’s surface is covered by interconnected bodies of water, which collectively represent the largest ecosystem on Earth. Today, the ocean habitat is teeming with morphologically, genetically, and functionally diverse microbes. In oceans, half of primary production occurs, and microbes are both responsible for the ocean respiration and play key roles in the transformations of the cycles of nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, iron, and other metals. Marine microbial ecology is among the most dynamic scientific fields, because it integrates many disciplines, such as oceanography, biogeochemistry, microbiology (including protistology and virology), physiology, evolution, and genomics. In the last three decades, numerous culture-independent techniques, which bypass the need for the isolation and laboratory cultivation of individual microbial species, have been developed. These innovations have fundamentally changed the field of marine microbiology, as they have rendered it possible to investigate microorganisms and their interactions with the environment and other organisms in situ. Examples of such culture-independent approaches include the cataloguing and phylogenetic analysis or rRNAs and other housekeeping or pathway-specific genes; the analysis of whole-community DNA; RNA or protein composition in meta-omic approaches; and the identification of in situ active microbial populations through stable- and radio-isotope labeling techniques. HTS technologies have contributed to improving our knowledge of the ecological relevance and evolutionary context of microdiversity.

Dr. Sandi Orlić
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • marine bacteria
  • marine fungi
  • marine protist
  • ocean and costal environments
  • microbial interactions and geochemical cycling

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 5818 KiB  
Article
Nutrient Enrichment Predominantly Affects Low Diversity Microbiomes in a Marine Trophic Symbiosis between Algal Farming Fish and Corals
by Adriana Messyasz, Rebecca L. Maher, Sonora S. Meiling and Rebecca Vega Thurber
Microorganisms 2021, 9(9), 1873; https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms9091873 - 03 Sep 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3010
Abstract
While studies show that nutrient pollution shifts reef trophic interactions between fish, macroalgae, and corals, we know less about how the microbiomes associated with these organisms react to such disturbances. To investigate how microbiome dynamics are affected during nutrient pollution, we exposed replicate [...] Read more.
While studies show that nutrient pollution shifts reef trophic interactions between fish, macroalgae, and corals, we know less about how the microbiomes associated with these organisms react to such disturbances. To investigate how microbiome dynamics are affected during nutrient pollution, we exposed replicate Porites lobata corals colonized by the fish Stegastes nigricans, which farm an algal matrix on the coral, to a pulse of nutrient enrichment over a two-month period and examined the microbiome of each partner using 16S amplicon analysis. We found 51 amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) shared among the three hosts. Coral microbiomes had the lowest diversity with over 98% of the microbiome dominated by a single genus, Endozoicomonas. Fish and algal matrix microbiomes were ~20 to 70× more diverse and had higher evenness compared to the corals. The addition of nutrients significantly increased species richness and community variability between samples of coral microbiomes but not the fish or algal matrix microbiomes, demonstrating that coral microbiomes are less resistant to nutrient pollution than their trophic partners. Furthermore, the 51 common ASVs within the 3 hosts indicate microbes that may be shared or transmitted between these closely associated organisms, including Vibrionaceae bacteria, many of which can be pathogenic to corals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microbial Communities in Marine Environments)
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15 pages, 1308 KiB  
Article
Biogeographic Role of the Kuroshio Current Intrusion in the Microzooplankton Community in the Boundary Zone of the Northern South China Sea
by Ping Sun, Silu Zhang, Ying Wang and Bangqin Huang
Microorganisms 2021, 9(5), 1104; https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms9051104 - 20 May 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2568
Abstract
Kuroshio Current intrusion (KCI) has significant impacts on the oceanographic conditions and ecological processes of the Pacific-Asian marginal seas. Little is known to which extent and how, specifically, the microzooplankton community can be influenced through the intrusion. Here, we focused on ciliates that [...] Read more.
Kuroshio Current intrusion (KCI) has significant impacts on the oceanographic conditions and ecological processes of the Pacific-Asian marginal seas. Little is known to which extent and how, specifically, the microzooplankton community can be influenced through the intrusion. Here, we focused on ciliates that often dominated the microzooplankton community and investigated their communities using high-throughput sequencing of 18S rRNA gene transcripts in the northern South China Sea (NSCS), where the Kuroshio Current (KC) intrudes frequently. We first applied an isopycnal mixing model to assess the fractional contribution of the KC to the NSCS. The ciliate community presented a provincial distribution pattern corresponding to more and less Kuroshio-influenced stations. Structural equation modeling revealed a significant impact of the KCI on the community, while environmental variables had a marginal impact. KCI-sensitive OTUs were taxonomically diverse but mainly belonged to classes Spirotrichea and Phyllopharyngea, suggesting the existence of core ciliates responding to the KCI. KCI-sensitive OTUs were grouped into two network modules that showed contrasting abundance behavior with the KC fraction gradient, reflecting differential niches (i.e., winner and loser) in the ciliate community during the Kuroshio intrusion scenarios. Our study showed that the Kuroshio intrusion, rather than environmental control, was particularly detrimental to the oligotrophic microzooplankton community. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microbial Communities in Marine Environments)
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