Environmental filtering determines family-level structure of sulfate-reducing microbial communities in subsurface marine sediments.

ABSTRACT: Recent work has shown that subsurface microbial communities assemble by selective survival of surface community members during sediment burial, but it remains unclear to what extent the compositions of the subsurface communities are a product of their founding population at the sediment surface or of the changing geochemical conditions during burial. Here we investigate this question for communities of sulfate-reducing microorganisms (SRMs). We collected marine sediment samples from the upper 3-5 m at four geochemically contrasting sites in the Skagerrak and Baltic Sea and measured SRM abundance (quantitative PCR of dsrB), metabolic activity (radiotracer rate measurements), and community composition (Illumina sequencing of dsrB amplicons). These data showed that SRM abundance, richness, an

SUBMITTER: Marshall IPG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6658220 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature