Cross-Ocean Distribution of Rhodobacterales Bacteria as Primary Surface Colonizers in Temperate Coastal Marine Waters

Abstract

Bacterial surface colonization is a universal adaptation strategy in aquatic environments. However, neither the identities of early colonizers nor the temporal changes in surface assemblages are well understood. To determine the identities of the most common bacterial primary colonizers and to assess the succession process, if any, of the bacterial assemblages during early stages of surface colonization in coastal water of the West Pacific Ocean, nonnutritive inert materials (glass, Plexiglas, and polyvinyl chloride) were employed as test surfaces and incubated in seawater off the Qingdao coast in the spring of 2005 for 24 and 72 h. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequences amplified from the recovered surface-colonizing microbiota indicated that diverse bacteria colonized the submerged surfaces. Multivariate statistical cluster analyses indicated that the succession of early surface-colonizing bacterial assemblages followed sequential steps on all types of test surfaces. The Rhodobacterales, especially the marine Roseobacter clade members, formed the most common and dominant primary surface-colonizing bacterial group. Our current data, along with previous studies of the Atlantic coast, indicate that the Rhodobacterales bacteria are the dominant and ubiquitous primary surface colonizers in temperate coastal waters of the world and that microbial surface colonization follows a succession sequence. A conceptual model is proposed based on these findings, which may have important implications for understanding the structure, dynamics, and function of marine biofilms and for developing strategies to harness or control surface-associated microbial communities.

Bacterial composition and spatiotemporal variation in sediments of Jiaozhou Bay, China

“…This difference in diversity may not only be due to PCR primer coverage and specificity but also may result from some experimental details that might improve the quality of our experiment (Dang et al 2008c;Li et al 2010). Indeed, some of the sediment bacterial groups uniquely found in the current study were also detected in previous surface-colonizing bacterial community analyses in Qingdao coastal seawater (Dang et al 2008a(Dang et al , 2011. In the present study, the Power Soil DNA Extraction Kit was used, which has been demonstrated to be an efficient DNA extraction method for marine sediments.…”

“…Meanwhile, sporadic oil spilling from the commercial ports near the bay mouth, intensive maricultural practices at the north area, along with red tides all make the situation even worse (Wang et al 2008;Dang et al 2010b;Deng et al 2010). A wide spectrum of environmental conditions and accordingly a widely varying bacterial community structure have already drawn the JZB many research interests in recent years (Dang et al 2008a(Dang et al , b, 2009b(Dang et al , 2010b. To date, however, studies that describe the spatiotemporal variations of the bacterial communities in JZB sediments are still limited.…”

The microbiome of North Sea copepods

“…Hence, it is not surprising that this group was already identified to be associated with copepods in recent studies (Grossart et al 2009;Tang et al 2009a, b;Møller 2007Møller et al 2007Peter and Sommaruga 2008). Rhodobacterales are known to be rapid and successful primary surface colonisers (Porsby et al 2008;Dang et al 2008;Jones et al 2007). The Rhodobacterales phylotypes found in this study clustered with sequences from surface-attached (biotic and abiotic surfaces), but also free-living bacteria.…”

Increase in Alphaproteobacteria in association with a polychaete, Capitella sp. I, in the organically enriched sediment

“…I that contributed to decomposition of the organic matter in the sediment. The marine Roseobacter clade members are primary colonizers of surfaces in marine environments (Dang and Lovell, 2000;Dang et al, 2008), and relate to degradation of a multitude of organic compounds, sulfur metabolism, production of antibacterial compounds and symbiotic relationships with diverse marine eukaryotes (Moran et al, 2003(Moran et al, , 2007Brinkhoff et al, 2008). The growth of the partial Roseobacter clade members might be promoted further by the gradient in the physicochemical properties of the burrow environment (Marinelli et al, 2002) and stimulatory effects of grazing by Capitella species and protozoa (Alongi, 1985;Plante and Shriver, 1998).…”