A cross-biomes bacterial diversity shed light on ocean-atmosphere microbial transmission

Abstract

Microbes play essential roles in biogeochemical processes in the oceans and atmosphere. Studying the interplay between these two ecosystems can provide important insights into microbial biogeography and diversity. We simultaneously mapped the microbial diversity of airborne and marine bacterial communities across 15,000 kilometers in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Higher variability in microbial community composition was observed in the atmosphere than in the surface waters. In addition, a greater similarity was observed between oceans as compared to their overlaying atmosphere, and between atmospheric samples than with the ocean beneath. We detected higher coverage and relative abundance of marine bacteria in the Pacific atmosphere as compared to the Atlantic, while the dominant fraction in the Atlantic atmosphere was annotated as soil-associated bacteria. This study advances our understanding of microbial dispersion over oceans, and of their potential impact on ecology, and biogeochemistry.

Size-Resolved Community Structure of Bacteria and Fungi Transported by Dust in the Middle East

“…Desert dust storms have been identified as a significant source for microorganisms in the atmosphere, estimated to emit 700–1,400 Gg of bacteria-carrying particles into the atmosphere per year ( Griffin et al, 2006 ; Griffin, 2007 ; Burrows et al, 2009a ). Dust plumes can travel thousands of kilometers and often display a significantly different microbial community composition than that in their destinations ( Peter et al, 2014 ; Meola et al, 2015 ; Mazar et al, 2016 ; Gat et al, 2017 ; Lang-Yona et al, 2020 , 2021 ). The East Mediterranean basin is prone to dust storms from the surrounding Sahara, Arabian and Syrian deserts.…”