Volcanic ash supports a diverse bacterial community in a marine mesocosm.

ABSTRACT: Shallow-water coral reef ecosystems, particularly those already impaired by anthropogenic pressures, may be highly sensitive to disturbances from natural catastrophic events, such as volcanic eruptions. Explosive volcanic eruptions expel large quantities of silicate ash particles into the atmosphere, which can disperse across millions of square kilometres and deposit into coral reef ecosystems. Following heavy ash deposition, mass mortality of reef biota is expected, but little is known about the recovery of post-burial reef ecosystems. Reef regeneration depends partly upon the capacity of the ash deposit to be colonised by waterborne bacterial communities and may be influenced to an unknown extent by the physiochemical properties of the ash substrate itself. To determine the potential for

SUBMITTER: Witt V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5413822 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature