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Interrelationships between Dunaliella and halophilic prokaryotes in saltern crystallizer ponds

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Abstract

Thanks to their often very high population densities and their simple community structure, saltern crystallizer ponds form ideal sites to study the behavior of halophilic microorganisms in their natural environment at saturating salt concentrations. The microbial community is dominated by square red halophilic Archaea, recently isolated and described as Haloquadratum walsbyi, extremely halophilic red rod-shaped Bacteria of the genus Salinibacter, and the unicellular green alga Dunaliella as the primary producer. We review here, the information available on the microbial community structure of the saltern crystallizer brines and the interrelationships between the main components of their biota. As Dunaliella produces massive amounts of glycerol to provide osmotic stabilization, glycerol is often postulated to be the most important source of organic carbon for the heterotrophic prokaryotes in hypersaline ecosystems. We assess here, the current evidence for the possible importance of glycerol and other carbon sources in the nutrition of the Archaea and the Bacteria, the relative contribution of halophilic Bacteria and Archaea to the heterotrophic activity in the brines, and other factors that determine the nature of the microbial communities that thrive in the salt-saturated brines of saltern crystallizer ponds.

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Abbreviations

FISH:

Fluorescent in situ hybridization

PHA:

Poly-β-hydroxyalkanoate

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Acknowledgments

Our work on the salterns in Eilat has been supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 504/03). We thank the Israel Salt Company in Eilat, Israel, for allowing access to the salterns, and the staff of the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences of Eilat, for logistic support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Institute of Life Sciences, and The Moshe Shilo Minerva Center for Marine Biogeochemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Rahel Elevi Bardavid, Polina Khristo & Aharon Oren

  2. Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, The Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Aharon Oren

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  1. Rahel Elevi Bardavid
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  2. Polina Khristo
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  3. Aharon Oren
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Correspondence to Aharon Oren.

Additional information

Communicated by D. A. Cowan.

Three-letter abbreviations for names of genera of Halobacteriaceae conform the recommendations of the ICSP Subcommittee on the Taxonomy of Halobacteriaceae.

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Elevi Bardavid, R., Khristo, P. & Oren, A. Interrelationships between Dunaliella and halophilic prokaryotes in saltern crystallizer ponds. Extremophiles 12, 5–14 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-006-0053-y

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