Assessment of microbial plankton diversity as an ecological indicator in the NW Mediterranean coast

Ferrera, Isabel; Reñé, Albert; Funosas, David; Camp, Jordi; Massana, Ramón; Gasol, Josep M.; Garcés, Esther

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2020.111691

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…The stability and resistance in a variable environment under both anthropogenic and climatic pressures may have important implications for management, suggesting that phytoplankton community structure may not be a good indicator of environmental changes 71 , 72 . However, while this study has been focused on regular occurrence patterns and stability signals, possible ‘sentinels’ should probably be looked at in specific phytoplankton attributes, not considered in our analyses, such as diversity and size, or interannual variability and abundance trends of specific taxa.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photoperiod-driven rhythms reveal multi-decadal stability of phytoplankton communities in a highly fluctuating coastal environment

Longobardi

Dubroca

Margiotta

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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Phytoplankton play a pivotal role in global biogeochemical and trophic processes and provide essential ecosystem services. However, there is still no broad consensus on how and to what extent their community composition responds to environmental variability. Here, high-frequency oceanographic and biological data collected over more than 25 years in a coastal Mediterranean site are used to shed light on the temporal patterns of phytoplankton species and assemblages in their environmental context. Because of the proximity to the coast and due to large-scale variations, environmental conditions showed variability on the short and long-term scales. Nonetheless, an impressive regularity characterised the annual occurrence of phytoplankton species and their assemblages, which translated into their remarkable stability over decades. Photoperiod was the dominant factor related to community turnover and replacement, which points at a possible endogenous regulation of biological processes associated with species-specific phenological patterns, in analogy with terrestrial plants. These results highlight the considerable stability and resistance of phytoplankton communities in response to different environmental pressures, which contrast the view of these organisms as passively undergoing changes that occur at different temporal scales in their habitat, and show how, under certain conditions, biological processes may prevail over environmental forcing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photoperiod-driven rhythms reveal multi-decadal stability of phytoplankton communities in a highly fluctuating coastal environment

Longobardi

Dubroca

Margiotta

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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“…On the other hand, alpha diversity analyses showed lower evenness in samples in the vicinity of wastewater outfall, indicating that the relative sequence abundance of species was not evenly distributed, suggesting higher perturbations of bacterial communities. The alpha diversity metric has been previously suggested as a useful tool for assessing anthropogenic impacts on coastal ecosystems and other water bodies ( Cordier et al, 2020 ; Ferrera et al, 2020 ). Studies of freshwater (rivers and lakes) ecosystems report that the vicinity of wastewater sources favors certain microbial groups, leading to biotic homogenization ( Drury et al, 2013 ; Lu and Lu, 2014 ; Saarenheimo et al, 2017 ), whereas a contrasting pattern is reported for polluted marine sediments, with which disturbance promoted co-occurrence of phylogenetically distinct species, resulting in increased diversity ( Galand et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bacterial Indicators Are Ubiquitous Members of Pelagic Microbiome in Anthropogenically Impacted Coastal Ecosystem

et al. 2022

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Coastal zones are exposed to various anthropogenic impacts, such as different types of wastewater pollution, e.g., treated wastewater discharges, leakage from sewage systems, and agricultural and urban runoff. These various inputs can introduce allochthonous organic matter and microbes, including pathogens, into the coastal marine environment. The presence of fecal bacterial indicators in the coastal environment is usually monitored using traditional culture-based methods that, however, fail to detect their uncultured representatives. We have conducted a year-around in situ survey of the pelagic microbiome of the dynamic coastal ecosystem, subjected to different anthropogenic pressures to depict the seasonal and spatial dynamics of traditional and alternative fecal bacterial indicators. To provide an insight into the environmental conditions under which bacterial indicators thrive, a suite of environmental factors and bacterial community dynamics were analyzed concurrently. Analyses of 16S rRNA amplicon sequences revealed that the coastal microbiome was primarily structured by seasonal changes regardless of the distance from the wastewater pollution sources. On the other hand, fecal bacterial indicators were not affected by seasons and accounted for up to 34% of the sequence proportion for a given sample. Even more so, traditional fecal indicator bacteria (Enterobacteriaceae) and alternative wastewater-associated bacteria (Lachnospiraceae, Ruminococcaceae, Arcobacteraceae, Pseudomonadaceae and Vibrionaceae) were part of the core coastal microbiome, i.e., present at all sampling stations. Microbial source tracking and Lagrangian particle tracking, which we employed to assess the potential pollution source, revealed the importance of riverine water as a vector for transmission of allochthonous microbes into the marine system. Further phylogenetic analysis showed that the Arcobacteraceae in our data set was affiliated with the pathogenic Arcobacter cryaerophilus, suggesting that a potential exposure risk for bacterial pathogens in anthropogenically impacted coastal zones remains. We emphasize that molecular analyses combined with statistical and oceanographic models may provide new insights for environmental health assessment and reveal the potential source and presence of microbial indicators, which are otherwise overlooked by a cultivation approach.

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“…BBMO is a coastal oligotrophic site in the North-Western Mediterranean Sea (41 • 40′N 2 • 48′E) with not many identi ed natural disturbances and little anthropogenic pressures, with the exception of the construction of a nearby harbor from 2010 to 2012 30,45 . The seasonal cycle is typical for a temperate coastal system 30 , and the main environmental factors in uencing microbial seasonal succession in temperate waters have been well studied and are known 12 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling temporal associations in marine microbial networks

Deutschmann

Krabberød

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Microbial interactions are fundamental for Earth’s ecosystem functioning and biogeochemical cycling. Nevertheless, they are challenging to identify and remain barely known. The omics-based censuses are helpful to predict microbial interactions through the inference of static association networks. However, since microbial interactions are highly dynamic, we have developed an approach to generate a temporal network from a single static network. We applied it to understand the monthly microbial associations’ dynamics occurring over ten years in the Blanes Bay Microbial Observatory (Mediterranean Sea). For the decade, we identified persistent, seasonal, and temporary microbial associations. Moreover, we found that the temporal network appears to follow an annual cycle, collapsing and reassembling when transiting between colder and warmer waters. We observed higher repeatability in colder than warmer months. Altogether, our results indicate that marine microbial networks follow recurrent temporal dynamics, which need to be accounted to better understand the dynamics of the ocean microbiome.

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Assessment of microbial plankton diversity as an ecological indicator in the NW Mediterranean coast

Cited by 13 publications

References 56 publications

Photoperiod-driven rhythms reveal multi-decadal stability of phytoplankton communities in a highly fluctuating coastal environment

Photoperiod-driven rhythms reveal multi-decadal stability of phytoplankton communities in a highly fluctuating coastal environment

Bacterial Indicators Are Ubiquitous Members of Pelagic Microbiome in Anthropogenically Impacted Coastal Ecosystem

Disentangling temporal associations in marine microbial networks

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