Seasonal Changes in Microbial Community Structure in Freshwater Stream Sediment in a North Carolina River Basin

Abstract

This study examined seasonal differences in microbial community structure in the sediment of three streams in North Carolina's Neuse River Basin. Microbes that reside in sediment are at the base of the food chain and have a profound influence on the health of freshwater stream environments. Terminal-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (T-RFLP), molecular fingerprint analysis of 16S rRNA genes was used to examine the diversity of bacterial species in stream sediment. Sediment was sampled in both wet and dry seasons from an agricultural (Bear), mixed urban (Crabtree) and forested (Marks) Creek, and the microbiota examined. Gamma, Alpha and Beta proteobacteria were prevalent species of microbial taxa represented among all sites. Actinobacteria was the next most prevalent species observed, with greater occurrence in dry compared to the wet season. Discernable clustering was observed of Marks and Bear Creek samples collected during the wetter period (September-April), which corresponded with a period of higher OPEN ACCESSDiversity 2014, 6 19 precipitation and cooler surface water temperatures. Although not statistically significant, microbial community structure appeared different between season (ANOSIM, R = 0.60; p < 0.10). Principal components analysis confirmed this pattern and showed that the bacterial groups were separated by wet and dry seasonal periods. These results suggest seasonal differences among the microbial community structure in sediment of freshwater streams and that these communities may respond to changes in precipitation during wetter periods.

Five-Year Monitoring of Bacterial Communities in Dripping Water from the Heshang Cave in Central China: Implication for Paleoclimate Reconstruction and Ecological Functions

“…In fact seasonal variation of microbial communities has been observed in various environments including soils (Rasche et al 2011;Shi et al 2013), marine sediments (Du et al 2011), reservoirs (Henne et al 2013) and stream sediments (Bucci et al 2014). It was reported that multiple potential factors including water chemistry (Shabarova and Pernthaler 2010), plant diversity, soil moisture, organic matter content, and soil temperature could impact microbial community composition (Rasche et al 2011;Shi et al 2013).…”

Soil microbial diversity of peri-urban agricultural field and riverbank along Yamuna river in Delhi, India

“…Different bacterial groups are specific in their activity and their habitat. They are very sensitive toward the changes occurring in the environment, and therefore, any kind of environmental stress results in a variation in the microbial community structure in the environment [51]. Our results are capable to explain the behavior of microbial community under different environmental stress conditions.…”

Abundance and Taxonomic Diversity of Bacteria Inhabiting the Sediment-Water Interface in a Marine Harbor Channel

“…This seasonal fluctuation in the number of bacterial taxonomic groups was earlier documented in the Delaware drainage basin (Hullar et al 2006), Liu et al (2012), in the Changjiang Estuary and East China Sea and in the Arabian Sea (Bandekar et al 2016). Mary et al (2006) and Bucci et al (2014) suggested that a variety of different environmental parameters (temperature, nutrient concentration, liability of organic matter, primary production and grazing bacteria) favoured different groups of polygenetic bacteria at different times of the year. Gammaproteobacteria, Flavobacterium-Cytophaga and Marine alpha-cluster were dominant in the water of the studied water basin in summer.…”

“…Among organisms inhabiting the sediment-water interface the most numerous and those with high productivity and enzymatic activity are microorganisms, mainly aerobic and anaerobic bacteria with different metabolic potential (Xia et al 2014;Wei et al 2016). These prokaryotic organisms play a key role in ecological functions and processes such as regulation, assimilation, accumulation, export, decomposition, degradation, enzymatic hydrolysis, re-mineralization and transformation of the largest part of organic matter accumulated in SWI (Bucci et al 2014;Wei et al 2016). According to Tanase et al (2009) and Liu et al (2012), in order to fully understand the role of bacteria in the functioning of the sediment-water interface, it is necessary not only to determine their secondary production, enzymatic activity, respiration processes, morphological differentiation and physiological properties but also to determine their abundance and taxonomic diversity.…”