Respiratory succession and community succession of bacterioplankton in seasonally anoxic estuarine waters.

ABSTRACT: Anoxia occurs in bottom waters of stratified estuaries when respiratory consumption of oxygen, primarily by bacteria, outpaces atmospheric and photosynthetic reoxygenation. Once water becomes anoxic, bacterioplankton must change their metabolism to some form of anaerobic respiration. Analysis of redox chemistry in water samples spanning the oxycline of Chesapeake Bay during the summer of 2004 suggested that there was a succession of respiratory metabolism following the loss of oxygen. Bacterial community doubling time, calculated from bacterial abundance (direct counts) and production (anaerobic leucine incorporation), ranged from 0.36 to 0.75 day and was always much shorter than estimates of the time that the bottom water was anoxic (18 to 44 days), indicating that there was adequate time

SUBMITTER: Crump BC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2074974 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature