Freshwater bacterioplankton richness in oligotrophic lakes depends on nutrient availability rather than on species-area relationships.

ABSTRACT: A central goal in ecology is to grasp the mechanisms that underlie and maintain biodiversity and patterns in its spatial distribution can provide clues about those mechanisms. Here, we investigated what might determine the bacterioplankton richness (BR) in lakes by means of 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. We further provide a BR estimate based upon a sampling depth and accuracy, which, to our knowledge, are unsurpassed for freshwater bacterioplankton communities. Our examination of 22,669 sequences per lake showed that freshwater BR in fourteen nutrient-poor lakes was positively influenced by nutrient availability. Our study is, thus, consistent with the finding that the supply of available nutrients is a major driver of species richness; a pattern that may well be universally val

SUBMITTER: Logue JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3358030 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature