Diversity and community structure of bacterioplankton in surface waters off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula

Abstract

Global climate change is significantly affecting marine life off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, but little is known about microbial ecology in this area. The main goal of this study was to investigate the bacterioplankton community structure in surface waters using pyrosequencing and to determine factors influencing this community. Pelagibacterales and Rhodobacterales (Alphaproteobacteria), Oceanospirillales and Alteromonadales (Gammaproteobacteria), and Flavobacteriales (Bacteroidetes) were the core taxa in our samples, and the five most relatively abundant genera were Pelagibacter, Polaribacter, Octadecabacter, group HTCC2207 and Sulfitobacter. Although nutrients and chlorophyll a (chl a) contributed more to bacterioplankton community structure than water masses or depth, only 30.39% of the variance could be explained by the investigated environmental factors, as revealed by RDA and pRDA. No significant difference with respect to nutrients and chl a was observed among water masses or depth, as indicated by ANOVA. Furthermore, significant correlations among the dominant bacterial genera were more common than correlations between dominant genera and environmental factors, as revealed by Spearman analysis. We conclude that nutrients and chl a become homogeneous and that interpopulation interactions may have a central role in influencing the bacterial community structure in surface waters off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula during the summer.

Keywords

• Bacteria
• dominant genera
• environmental factors
• interpopulation interactions
• pyrosequencing