Antarctic Snow Algae: Unraveling the Processes Underlying Microbial Community Assembly During Blooms Formation

Overview

Journal Microbiome

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialties Genetics
Microbiology

Date 2023 Sep 4

PMID 37667346

Authors

Daniela F Soto

Ivan Gomez

Pirjo Huovinen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background And Aims: At the West Antarctic Peninsula, snow algae blooms are composed of complex microbial communities dominated by green microalgae and bacteria. During their progression, the assembly of these microbial communities occurs under harsh environmental conditions and variable nutrient content due to fast snow melting. To date, it is still unclear what are the ecological mechanisms governing the composition and abundance of microorganisms during the formation of snow algae blooms. In this study, we aim to examine the main ecological mechanisms governing the assembly of snow algae blooms from early stages to colorful stages blooms.

Methods: The composition of the microbial communities within snow algae blooms was recorded in the West Antarctic Peninsula (Isabel Riquelme Islet) during a 35-day period using 16S rRNA and 18S rRNA metabarcoding. In addition, the contribution of different ecological processes to the assembly of the microbial community was quantified using phylogenetic bin-based null model analysis.

Results: Our results showed that alpha diversity indices of the eukaryotic communities displayed a higher variation during the formation of the algae bloom compared with the bacterial community. Additionally, in a macronutrients rich environment, the content of nitrate, ammonium, phosphate, and organic carbon did not play a major role in structuring the community. The quantification of ecological processes showed that the bacterial community assembly was governed by selective processes such as homogenous selection. In contrast, stochastic processes such as dispersal limitation and drift, and to a lesser extent, homogenous selection, regulate the eukaryotic community.

Conclusions: Overall, our study highlights the differences in the microbial assembly between bacteria and eukaryotes in snow algae blooms and proposes a model to integrate both assembly processes. Video Abstract.

References

Benkman C . Biotic interaction strength and the intensity of selection. Ecol Lett. 2013; 16(8):1054-60. DOI: 10.1111/ele.12138. View

Brown S, Jumpponen A . Microbial Ecology of Snow Reveals Taxa-Specific Biogeographical Structure. Microb Ecol. 2019; 77(4):946-958. DOI: 10.1007/s00248-019-01357-z. View

Legendre P, Gallagher E . Ecologically meaningful transformations for ordination of species data. Oecologia. 2017; 129(2):271-280. DOI: 10.1007/s004420100716. View

McMurdie P, Holmes S . phyloseq: an R package for reproducible interactive analysis and graphics of microbiome census data. PLoS One. 2013; 8(4):e61217. PMC: 3632530. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061217. View

Ning D, Yuan M, Wu L, Zhang Y, Guo X, Zhou X . A quantitative framework reveals ecological drivers of grassland microbial community assembly in response to warming. Nat Commun. 2020; 11(1):4717. PMC: 7501310. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18560-z. View

Bodenhofer U, Bonatesta E, Horejs-Kainrath C, Hochreiter S . msa: an R package for multiple sequence alignment. Bioinformatics. 2015; 31(24):3997-9. DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btv494. View

Fadrosh D, Ma B, Gajer P, Sengamalay N, Ott S, Brotman R . An improved dual-indexing approach for multiplexed 16S rRNA gene sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform. Microbiome. 2014; 2(1):6. PMC: 3940169. DOI: 10.1186/2049-2618-2-6. View

Darcy J, Lynch R, King A, Robeson M, Schmidt S . Global distribution of Polaromonas phylotypes--evidence for a highly successful dispersal capacity. PLoS One. 2011; 6(8):e23742. PMC: 3163589. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0023742. View

Prochazkova L, Remias D, Holzinger A, rezanka T, Nedbalova L . Ecophysiological and morphological comparison of two populations of sp. (Chlorophyta) causing red snow on ice-covered lakes in the High Tatras and Austrian Alps. Eur J Phycol. 2018; 53(2):230-243. PMC: 5940174. DOI: 10.1080/09670262.2018.1426789. View

10.

Quast C, Pruesse E, Yilmaz P, Gerken J, Schweer T, Yarza P . The SILVA ribosomal RNA gene database project: improved data processing and web-based tools. Nucleic Acids Res. 2012; 41(Database issue):D590-6. PMC: 3531112. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gks1219. View

11.

Krug L, Erlacher A, Markut K, Berg G, Cernava T . The microbiome of alpine snow algae shows a specific inter-kingdom connectivity and algae-bacteria interactions with supportive capacities. ISME J. 2020; 14(9):2197-2210. PMC: 7608445. DOI: 10.1038/s41396-020-0677-4. View

12.

Cheung M, Au C, Chu K, Kwan H, Wong C . Composition and genetic diversity of picoeukaryotes in subtropical coastal waters as revealed by 454 pyrosequencing. ISME J. 2010; 4(8):1053-9. DOI: 10.1038/ismej.2010.26. View

13.

Cosetta C, Wolfe B . Causes and consequences of biotic interactions within microbiomes. Curr Opin Microbiol. 2019; 50:35-41. DOI: 10.1016/j.mib.2019.09.004. View

14.

Zhou J, Ning D . Stochastic Community Assembly: Does It Matter in Microbial Ecology?. Microbiol Mol Biol Rev. 2017; 81(4). PMC: 5706748. DOI: 10.1128/MMBR.00002-17. View

15.

Mestre M, Hofer J . The Microbial Conveyor Belt: Connecting the Globe through Dispersion and Dormancy. Trends Microbiol. 2020; 29(6):482-492. DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2020.10.007. View

16.

Klindworth A, Pruesse E, Schweer T, Peplies J, Quast C, Horn M . Evaluation of general 16S ribosomal RNA gene PCR primers for classical and next-generation sequencing-based diversity studies. Nucleic Acids Res. 2012; 41(1):e1. PMC: 3592464. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gks808. View

17.

Remias D, Prochazkova L, Holzinger A, Nedbalova L . Ecology, cytology and phylogeny of the snow alga K-1 (Chlamydomonadales, Chlorophyta) from the Austrian Alps. Phycologia. 2019; 57(5):581-592. PMC: 6469580. DOI: 10.2216/18-45.1. View

18.

Gu Z, Liu K, Pedersen M, Wang F, Chen Y, Zeng C . Community assembly processes underlying the temporal dynamics of glacial stream and lake bacterial communities. Sci Total Environ. 2020; 761:143178. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143178. View

19.

Lutz S, Anesio A, Field K, Benning L . Integrated 'Omics', Targeted Metabolite and Single-cell Analyses of Arctic Snow Algae Functionality and Adaptability. Front Microbiol. 2015; 6:1323. PMC: 4659291. DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2015.01323. View

20.

Brown J, Hovmoller M . Aerial dispersal of pathogens on the global and continental scales and its impact on plant disease. Science. 2002; 297(5581):537-41. DOI: 10.1126/science.1072678. View