Specificity of Salt Marsh Diazotrophs for Vegetation Zones and Plant Hosts: Results from a North American marsh.

ABSTRACT: Salt marshes located on the east coast of temperate North America are highly productive, typically nitrogen-limited, and support diverse assemblages of free-living nitrogen fixing (diazotrophic) bacteria. This article reviews and analyzes data from North Inlet estuary (SC, USA), addressing diazotroph assemblage structure and the influence of plant host and environmental conditions on the assemblage. The North Inlet estuary is a salt marsh ecosystem in which anthropogenic influences are minimal and the distributions of diazotrophs are governed by the natural biota and dynamics of the system. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis fingerprinting and phylogenetic analyses of recovered sequences demonstrated that the distributions of some diazotrophs reflect plant host specificity and that di

SUBMITTER: Lovell CR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3306022 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature