Microbial communities in the tropical air ecosystem follow a precise diel cycle.

ABSTRACT: The atmosphere is vastly underexplored as a habitable ecosystem for microbial organisms. In this study, we investigated 795 time-resolved metagenomes from tropical air, generating 2.27 terabases of data. Despite only 9 to 17% of the generated sequence data currently being assignable to taxa, the air harbored a microbial diversity that rivals the complexity of other planetary ecosystems. The airborne microbial organisms followed a clear diel cycle, possibly driven by environmental factors. Interday taxonomic diversity exceeded day-to-day and month-to-month variation. Environmental time series revealed the existence of a large core of microbial taxa that remained invariable over 13 mo, thereby underlining the long-term robustness of the airborne community structure. Unlike terrestrial or aqu

SUBMITTER: Gusareva ES 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6859341 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature