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Life at the hyperarid margin: novel bacterial diversity in arid soils of the Atacama Desert, Chile

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Abstract

Nearly half the earth’s surface is occupied by dryland ecosystems, regions susceptible to reduced states of biological productivity caused by climate fluctuations. Of these regions, arid zones located at the interface between vegetated semiarid regions and biologically unproductive hyperarid zones are considered most vulnerable. The objective of this study was to conduct a deep diversity analysis of bacterial communities in unvegetated arid soils of the Atacama Desert, to characterize community structure and infer the functional potential of these communities based on observed phylogenetic associations. A 454-pyrotag analysis was conducted of three unvegetated arid sites located at the hyperarid–arid margin. The analysis revealed communities with unique bacterial diversity marked by high abundances of novel Actinobacteria and Chloroflexi and low levels of Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria, phyla that are dominant in many biomes. A 16S rRNA gene library of one site revealed the presence of clones with phylogenetic associations to chemoautotrophic taxa able to obtain energy through oxidation of nitrite, carbon monoxide, iron, or sulfur. Thus, soils at the hyperarid margin were found to harbor a wealth of novel bacteria and to support potentially viable communities with phylogenetic associations to non-phototrophic primary producers and bacteria capable of biogeochemical cycling.

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Abbreviations

MAP:

Mean annual precipitation

MDRS:

Mars Desert Research Station

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Acknowledgments

We would like to express our appreciation to Audrey Copeland for her assistance with the organic carbon analysis, to Yeisoo Yu and Nick Sisneros of the Arizona Genomics Institute for their assistance with 454-pyrosequencing, and to Andrea Byrne and Juliana Gil-Loaiza for generating the site 2547 negative clone library. Funding for this work was supplied by the National Science Foundation Microbial Observatory Grant MCB0604300 and from the Exxon-Mobile COSA Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science, University of Arizona, Shantz Bldg Room 429, P.O. Box 210038, Tucson, AZ, 85721-0038, USA

    Julia W. Neilson, Marianyoly Ortiz, Antje Legatzki, Fei Tian, Michelle LaComb & Raina M. Maier

  2. Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Jay Quade

  3. Bio5 Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    William M. Nelson & Carol A. Soderlund

  4. Department of Plant Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Rod A. Wing

  5. US Geological Survey, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Julio L. Betancourt

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  1. Julia W. Neilson
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Correspondence to Julia W. Neilson.

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Communicated by A. Oren.

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Neilson, J.W., Quade, J., Ortiz, M. et al. Life at the hyperarid margin: novel bacterial diversity in arid soils of the Atacama Desert, Chile. Extremophiles 16, 553–566 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-012-0454-z

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