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Assembly of Active Bacterial and Fungal Communities Along a Natural Environmental Gradient

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

Dormancy is thought to promote biodiversity within microbial communities, but how assembly of the active community responds to changes in environmental conditions is unclear. To measure the active and dormant communities of bacteria and fungi colonizing decomposing litter in maple forests, we targeted ribosomal genes and transcripts across a natural environmental gradient. Within bacterial and fungal communities, the active and dormant communities were phylogenetically distinct, but patterns of phylogenetic clustering varied. For bacteria, active communities were significantly more clustered than dormant communities, while the reverse was found for fungi. The proportion of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) classified as active and the degree of phylogenetic clustering of the active bacterial communities declined with increasing pH and decreasing C/N. No significant correlations were found for the fungal community. The opposing pattern of phylogenetic clustering in dormant and active communities and the differential response of active communities to environmental gradients suggest that dormancy differentially structures bacterial and fungal communities.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Zachary Freedman and Sarah Eisenlord for sample collection, John Dunbar, Blaire Steven, and Cedar Hesse for helpful discussions, and two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions greatly improved the manuscript. Funding for this study came from the Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research program, the Los Alamos National Laborarory LDRD program and the National Science Foundation Long-Term Ecological Research program. This is LANL unclassified report LA-UR-14-25588.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bioscience Division, M888, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, 87545, USA

    Rebecca C Mueller, Laverne Gallegos-Graves & Cheryl R Kuske

  2. School of Natural Resources and Environment, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Donald R. Zak

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  1. Rebecca C Mueller
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  2. Laverne Gallegos-Graves
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Correspondence to Rebecca C Mueller.

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Mueller, R.C., Gallegos-Graves, L., Zak, D.R. et al. Assembly of Active Bacterial and Fungal Communities Along a Natural Environmental Gradient. Microb Ecol 71, 57–67 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-015-0655-y

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