Microscale ecology regulates particulate organic matter turnover in model marine microbial communities
Name
s41467-018-05159-8.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
757.08 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0623bf40392e0e9b1df90997da59c485
Author(s)
Enke, Tim Niklas
Leventhal, Gabriel Etan
Metzger, Matthew
Saavedra, José T.
Cordero Sanchez, Otto X.
Date Issued
July 2018
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Enke, Tim N., et al. "Microscale ecology regulates particulate organic matter turnover in model marine microbial communities." Nature Communications, 9 (2018): 2743. © 2018 The Author(s).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The degradation of particulate organic matter in the ocean is a central process in the global carbon cycle, the mode and tempo of which is determined by the bacterial communities that assemble on particle surfaces. Here, we find that the capacity of communities to degrade particles is highly dependent on community composition using a collection of marine bacteria cultured from different stages of succession on chitin microparticles. Different particle degrading taxa display characteristic particle half-lives that differ by ~170 h, comparable to the residence time of particles in the ocean's mixed layer. Particle half-lives are in general longer in multispecies communities, where the growth of obligate cross-feeders hinders the ability of degraders to colonize and consume particles in a dose dependent manner. Our results suggest that the microscale community ecology of bacteria on particle surfaces can impact the rates of carbon turnover in the ocean.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05159-8
