Project Details
Projekt Print View

Determinants of Community Structure, Function and Succession of Freshwater Microorganisms Colonizing Lake Snow

Subject Area Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology
Term from 2017 to 2024
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 393798666
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

Organic particles mediate the cycling of major elements on our planet and play an important role in the balance of nutrients in lakes and oceans. Sinking, suspended and ascending particles link the different parts of aquatic systems by transferring carbon, nutrients, and organisms. Organic particles are hotspots for microbial activity and are colonized by diverse microorganisms with communities altering in time due to competition and gradual change in the carbon and nutritional qualities of the particles. Traditionally, microbial diversity and activity on organic matter particles have been studied using highthroughput bulk approaches, in which multiple particles of different sizes, sources (e.g., fecal pellets or phytoplankton), and ages are averaged. Recent work from PI Bizic and others has demonstrated that bulk-based approaches do not accurately reflect the diversity or activity of microorganisms on individual particles, and studies are often biased by a few non-representative larger particles. In fact, individual particles are highly heterogeneous micro-ecosystems; therefore, zooming into particles at the individual particle scale is essential to understand the degree of heterogeneity among particles in colonizing community structure and its activity. Doing so enables new insights into the microbial ecology driving biogeochemical variability and allows the incorporation of data on individual particles into lake, ocean, and global models for improved understanding of carbon storage in aquatic ecosystems. This project focused on studying the microbial communities on individual particles in limnic and marine settings, focusing on heterogeneity in community compositions and activity. The results revealed that 1) Using closed systems in long-term studies on organic particles results in biases; 2) Particle source has minimal influence on initial particle colonization; 3) Particles are highly heterogeneous in colonizing communities and in activity; 4) During sinking the particle colonizing community is shifting between genomically different organisms whose metabolic properties are still under evaluation during the submission of this report.

Publications

 
 

Additional Information

Textvergrößerung und Kontrastanpassung