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Thesis
MICROBIAL BIOGEOGRAPHY IN THE WATER COLUMN AND SEDIMENTS OF THE NORTHEASTERN GULF OF MEXICO
University of West Florida
Master of Science (MS), University of West Florida
2017
Abstract
Through their metabolic activities marine microbes are essential for marine biogeochemical cycles. Charting their spatial distribution and biogeographical patterns is important in order to increase knowledge of what drives these microbial communities. We evaluated the bacterial communities at 22 locations in the northeast Gulf of Mexico during the summer months of 2013. Surface, water column, and surface sediment samples totaled 91 communities. Metadata and physical parameters measurements were collected at each location. Seawater (~20L) was collected on Sterivex filters and stored at -80U+00B0 C until gDNA extraction and subsequent Illumina sequencing (MiSeq), targeting the 16S rRNA gene. OTU picking routines generated over 280,000 OTU's and identified >14 million sequences across the dataset. Alpha diversity estimates revealed significant distinction between water column samples (Surface and Intermediate samples) and benthic samples (Sediment, Core and WOC) in terms of richness and Chao1 diversity, with the latter group prevailing. The eight most prevalent OTU's comprised 15% of the dataset population and were predominantly located in water column samples; Synechococcus (5.29%), Alteromonas (1.6%) and Prochlorococcus (1.51%) were the only groups previously classified. In contrast, most of these highly abundant groups existed in very small numbers in the benthic samples. Significant correlation was found between environmental parameters and the water column biological community. According to primer6 BEST analysis, temperature, longitude, dissolved oxygen, fluorescence, and nitrate/nitrite exert notable influence on the northeast GoM bacterial community structure.
Details
- Title
- MICROBIAL BIOGEOGRAPHY IN THE WATER COLUMN AND SEDIMENTS OF THE NORTHEASTERN GULF OF MEXICO
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Publisher
- University of West Florida
- Format
- text
- Identifiers
- 99380090854706600
- Academic Unit
- Biology
- Language
- English
- Awarding Institution
- University of West Florida; Master of Science (MS)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), University of West Florida