Do Organic Substrates Drive Microbial Community Interactions in Arctic Snow?

ABSTRACT: The effect of nutrients on microbial interactions, including competition and collaboration, has mainly been studied in laboratories, but their potential application to complex ecosystems is unknown. Here, we examined the effect of changes in organic acids among other parameters on snow microbial communities in situ over 2 months. We compared snow bacterial communities from a low organic acid content period to that from a higher organic acid period. We hypothesized that an increase in organic acids would shift the dominant microbial interaction from collaboration to competition. To evaluate microbial interactions, we built taxonomic co-variance networks from OTUs obtained from 16S rRNA gene sequencing. In addition, we tracked marker genes of microbial cooperation (plasmid backbone ge

SUBMITTER: Bergk Pinto B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6842950 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature