A novel cohabitation between two diazotrophic cyanobacteria in the oligotrophic ocean.

ABSTRACT: The cyanobacterial genus Trichodesmium is biogeochemically significant because of its dual role in nitrogen and carbon fixation in the oligotrophic ocean. Trichodesmium species form colonies that can be easily enriched from the water column and used for shipboard rate measurements to estimate their contribution to oceanic carbon and nitrogen budgets. During a July 2010 cruise near the Hawaiian Islands in the oligotrophic North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a specific morphology of Trichodesmium puff-form colonies were examined under epifluorescent microscopy and found to harbor a colonial endobiont, morphologically identified as the heterocystous diazotrophic cyanobacterium Calothrix. Using unialgal enrichments obtained from this cruise, we show that these Calothrix-like heterocystous cyanobio

SUBMITTER: Momper LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4817694 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature