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Human and environmental impacts on river sediment microbial communities
Sean M Gibbons1, Edwin Jones2, Angelita Bearquiver2
1Graduate Program in Biophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois, United States of America; Biology Department, Chief Dull Knife College, Lame Deer, Montana, United States of America.
Plos One
|May 21, 2014
Summary
River sediment microbes are incredibly diverse and novel, showing high functional capacity. Human land use significantly alters microbial communities, impacting ecosystem health and function.
Area of Science:
- Environmental microbiology
- Ecosystem ecology
- Riverine science
Background:
- Sediment microbial communities drive essential metabolic processes in freshwater ecosystems.
- Understanding microbial community dynamics is crucial for predicting ecosystem responses to human land-use change.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the spatiotemporal structure and functional potential of sediment microbial communities in the Tongue River, Montana.
- To assess the impact of anthropogenic drivers on freshwater microbial ecosystems.
Main Methods:
- Conducted a two-year spatiotemporal study of sediment microbial communities at six sites along the Tongue River.
- Utilized 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and shotgun metagenomics to analyze microbial community structure and functional potential.
Main Results:
- Identified the Tongue River sediments as the richest and most novel ecosystems analyzed by the Earth Microbiome Project.
- Observed significant alterations in microbial community structure and function due to anthropogenic factors like urbanization and resource extraction.
- Found that microbial community structure is shaped by environmental drivers and niche filtering, with some influence from stochastic processes.
Conclusions:
- Sediment microbial communities in the Tongue River are exceptionally diverse and sensitive to land-use practices.
- Anthropogenic activities introduce specific metabolic signatures and increase pathogenicity markers within these ecosystems.
- Microbial community assembly is influenced by both deterministic environmental factors and stochastic processes.