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Prokaryotic Communities Differ Along a Geothermal Soil Photic Gradient

  • Soil Microbiology
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Abstract

Geothermal influenced soils exert unique physical and chemical limitations on resident microbial communities but have received little attention in microbial ecology research. These environments offer a model system in which to investigate microbial community heterogeneity and a range of soil ecological concepts. We conducted a 16S bar-coded pyrosequencing survey of the prokaryotic communities in a diatomaceous geothermal soil system and compared communities across soil types and along a conspicuous photic depth gradient. We found significant differences between the communities of the two different soils and also predictable differences between samples taken at different depths. Additionally, we targeted three ecologically relevant bacterial phyla, Cyanobacteria, Planctomycetes, and Verrucomicrobia, for clade-wise comparisons with these variables and found strong differences in their abundances, consistent with the autecology of these groups.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Yellowstone National Park permit personnel for help with permitting; to the Grand Teton Association for financial support through the Boyd Evison Graduate Fellowship to JM; to the Institute on Ecosystems for financial support through a Dissertation Fellowship to JM; to D. Skorupa, S. Clingenpeel, and T. R. McDermott for their help with primer design, barcoding, and amplification; and to R. Castenholz for assistance with irradiance measurement.

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  1. James F. Meadow

    Present address: University of Oregon, 5289 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, 334 Leon Johnson Hall, Bozeman, MT, 59717, USA

    James F. Meadow & Catherine A. Zabinski

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  1. James F. Meadow
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  2. Catherine A. Zabinski
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Correspondence to James F. Meadow.

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Supplemental Figure 1

Comparison of phylogenetic unweighted UniFrac distances to qualitative Ochiai (a) and quantitative Canberra (b). Correlation coefficients (r values) indicate that limited additional information was gained by considering phylogenetic relationships (JPEG 45 kb)

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Meadow, J.F., Zabinski, C.A. Prokaryotic Communities Differ Along a Geothermal Soil Photic Gradient. Microb Ecol 65, 171–179 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-012-0103-1

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