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Bacterial Diversity in Microbial Mats and Sediments from the Atacama Desert

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

The Atacama Desert has extreme environmental conditions that allow the development of unique microbial communities. The present paper reports the bacterial diversity of microbial mats and sediments and its mineralogical components. Some physicochemical conditions of the water surrounding these ecosystems have also been studied trying to determine their influence on the diversity of these communities. In that way, mats and sediments distributed among different hypersaline lakes located in salt flats of the Atacama Desert were subjected to massive parallel sequencing of the V4 region of the 16S rRNA genes of Bacteria. A higher diversity in sediment than in mat samples have been found. Lakes that harbor microbial mats have higher salinity than lakes where mats are absent. Proteobacteria and/or Bacteroidetes are the major phyla represented in all samples. An interesting item is the finding of a low proportion or absence of Cyanobacteria sequences in the ecosystems studied, suggesting the possibility that other groups may be playing an essential role as primary producers in these extreme environments. Additionally, the large proportion of 16S rRNA gene sequences that could not be classified at the level of phylum indicates potential new phyla present in these ecosystems.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile and Centro de Ecología Aplicada. Fernández, Kurth, and Rasuk are recipients of a CONICET fellowship. We also want to thank Lic Javier Maldonado of CONICET for his assistance in field trip and Lic. Cecilia Genazzini and Mr. Pablo García of CONICET for their assistance in the XRD laboratory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Investigaciones Microbiológicas de Lagunas Andinas (LIMLA), Planta Piloto de Procesos Industriales Microbiológicos (PROIMI), CCT, CONICET, Tucumán, Argentina

    Maria Cecilia Rasuk, Ana Beatriz Fernández, Daniel Kurth & María Eugenia Farías

  2. Centro de Ecología Aplicada (CEA), Suecia 3304, Ñuñoa, Santiago, F 56-2-2741872, Chile

    Manuel Contreras & Fernando Novoa

  3. Centro de Investigaciones Geológicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata-Conicet, calle 1 no 644, 1900, La Plata, Argentina

    Daniel Poiré

Authors
  1. Maria Cecilia Rasuk
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  2. Ana Beatriz Fernández
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  3. Daniel Kurth
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  4. Manuel Contreras
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  5. Fernando Novoa
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  7. María Eugenia Farías
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Correspondence to María Eugenia Farías.

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Supplementary Figure S1

Mineral composition of the mats and sediments obtained by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses. (A-E) Difractograms of LL1, LL2, Cej, Cop and Puj respectively. (F) Ternary plot of major minerals in the samples. Cej and LL1 (gypsum-rich), Puj and LL2 (halite-rich), Cop (carbonates-rich) (G) Table showing mineral composition in the samples and their relative abundance (H) Comparative bar graph displaying the relative mineral abundance. (GIF 165 kb)

High resolution image (TIFF 3855 kb)

Supplementary Figure S2

Beta diversity analysis comparing the phylum-level abundance. Socompa stromatolite (Soc), Bahamas trombolite (BaT), Bahamas stromatolite (BaS), Tebenquiche mat (Teb), Brava mat (Bra), Guerrero Negro mat (Gne), Yellowstone stromatolites (YsF, YsC). (GIF 515 kb)

High resolution image (TIFF 298 kb)

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Rasuk, M.C., Fernández, A.B., Kurth, D. et al. Bacterial Diversity in Microbial Mats and Sediments from the Atacama Desert. Microb Ecol 71, 44–56 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-015-0649-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-015-0649-9

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