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Molecular Characterization and Geological Microenvironment of a Microbial Community Inhabiting Weathered Receding Shale Cliffs

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

Shales play an important role in many earth system processes including coastal erosion, and they form the foundations of many engineering structures. The geobiology of the interior of pyrite-containing receding shale cliffs on the coast of northeast England was examined. The surface of the weathered shales was characterised by a thin layer of disordered authigenic iron oxyhydroxides and localised acicular, platy and aggregated gypsum, which was characterised by Raman spectroscopy, XAS and SEM. These chemical changes are likely to play an important role in causing rock weakening along fractures at the micron scale, which ultimately lead to coastal retreat at the larger scale. The surface of the shale hosts a novel, low-diversity microbial community. The bacterial community was dominated by Proteobacteria, with phylotypes closely associating with Methylocella and other members of the γ-subdivision. The second largest phylogenetic group corresponded to Nitrospira. The archaeal 16S rRNA phylotypes were dominated by a single group of sequences that matched phylotypes reported from South African gold mines and possessed ammonia monooxygenase (amoA) genes. Both the phylogenetic and the mineral data show that acidic microenvironments play an important role in shale weathering, but the shale has a higher microbial diversity than previously described pyritic acid mine drainage sites. The presence of a potentially biogeochemically active microbial population on the rock surface suggests that microorganisms may contribute to early events of shale degradation and coastal erosion.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Cleveland Potash Ltd. for financial support for this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geomicrobiology Research Group, Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR), The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

    Charles S. Cockell, Karen Olsson-Francis & Laura Kelly

  2. Cleveland Potash Ltd., Boulby Mine, Saltburn by the Sea, Cleveland, TS13 4UZ, UK

    David Pybus

  3. Department of Geography, Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK

    David Petley & Nick Rosser

  4. Meteoritics and Cosmic Mineralogy, Department of Mineralogy, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK

    Kieren Howard

  5. Diamond Light Source, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 ODE, UK

    Fred Mosselmans

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  1. Charles S. Cockell
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Correspondence to Charles S. Cockell.

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Cockell, C.S., Pybus, D., Olsson-Francis, K. et al. Molecular Characterization and Geological Microenvironment of a Microbial Community Inhabiting Weathered Receding Shale Cliffs. Microb Ecol 61, 166–181 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-010-9730-6

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