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Microbial Community Structure and Function Decoupling Across a Phosphorus Gradient in Streams

  • Microbiology of Aquatic Systems
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Abstract

Phosphorus (P) is a key biological element with important and unique biogeochemical cycling in natural ecosystems. Anthropogenic phosphorus inputs have been shown to greatly affect natural ecosystems, and this has been shown to be especially true of freshwater systems. While the importance of microbial communities in the P cycle is widely accepted, the role, composition, and relationship to P of these communities in freshwater systems still hold many secrets. Here, we investigated combined bacterial and archaeal communities utilizing 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequencing and computationally predicted functional metagenomes (PFMs) in 25 streams representing a strong P gradient. We discovered that 16S rRNA community structure and PFMs demonstrate a degree of decoupling between structure and function in the system. While we found that total phosphorus (TP) was correlated to the structure and functional capability of bacterial and archaeal communities in the system, turbidity had a stronger, but largely independent, correlation. At TP levels of approximately 55 μg/L, we see sharp differences in the abundance of numerous ecologically important taxa related to vegetation, agriculture, sediment, and other ecosystem inhabitants.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Morgan Bettcher, Stephen Cook, Stephen Elser, Katherine Hooker, Lauren Housley, and Caleb Robbins for their help in collecting field samples. We also thank Owen Lind and J. Thad Scott for assistance with internal review. We acknowledge the research support by Baylor University Office of Research and Baylor University Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research (CRASR).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research, Baylor University, One Bear Place 97388, Waco, TX, 76798-7388, USA

    Erick S. LeBrun, Ryan S. King, Jeffrey A. Back & Sanghoon Kang

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  1. Erick S. LeBrun
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  2. Ryan S. King
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  3. Jeffrey A. Back
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Correspondence to Sanghoon Kang.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Statement of Data Availability

Sequence data that support the findings of this study have been deposited in GenBank with the BioProject accession code PRJNA350288. The environmental data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary information is available at the Microbial Ecology journal website.

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LeBrun, E.S., King, R.S., Back, J.A. et al. Microbial Community Structure and Function Decoupling Across a Phosphorus Gradient in Streams. Microb Ecol 75, 64–73 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-017-1039-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-017-1039-2

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