Annually reoccurring bacterial communities are predictable from ocean conditions.

ABSTRACT: Factors influencing patterns in the distribution and abundance of plant and animal taxa modulate ecosystem function and ecosystem response to environmental change, which is often taken to infer low functional redundancy among such species, but such relationships are poorly known for microbial communities. Using high-resolution molecular fingerprinting, we demonstrate the existence of extraordinarily repeatable temporal patterns in the community composition of 171 operational taxonomic units of marine bacterioplankton over 4.5 years at our Microbial Observatory site, 20 km off the southern California coast. These patterns in distribution and abundance of microbial taxa were highly predictable and significantly influenced by a broad range of both abiotic and biotic factors. These findings pr

SUBMITTER: Fuhrman JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1559760 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature