Geographical variation of bacterial and ciliophoran communities in tidal flats in a continental archipelago

In tidal flats, which are located at the transition zone between terrestrial and marine ecosystems, environmental factors such as temperature, sediment particle size, and tidal range exhibit geographic variation. Accordingly, the composition and structure of the microbial communities in the tidal flats are likely to vary in geographically different habitats. To clarify these differences with environmental factors causing them, we analyzed microbial communities consisting of bacteria and ciliates in sediments collected from nine tidal flats in geographical diverse region from Hokkaido to Kagoshima, Japan. The results confirmed that the community structures of bacteria and ciliophora in tidal flat sediments differed at the geographical scale of the Japanese archipelago. However, the variation could not be explained by the physical distance between the tidal flats nor by the differences in the trophic conditions among the tidal flats. Instead, the OTU richness of both the bacterial and ciliophoran communities was significantly related to the tidal range. The results also showed that bacteria and ciliophora tended to form similar communities among the tidal flats with similar median particle sizes. Furthermore, ciliophoran communities were similar among the tidal flats with similar bacterial communities. The results suggest that bacteria and ciliophora interact each other through trophic relationships or physical and chemical processes in the sediment habitats.