Biology Faculty Articles
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-4-2019
Publication Title
Frontiers in Microbiology
Keywords
Gulf of Mexico, Microbial plankton, 16S rRNA, Pelagic, DEEPEND
ISSN
1664-302X
Volume
9
First Page
Article 3175, 1
Last Page
13
Abstract
The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) is a dynamic marine ecosystem influenced by multiple natural and anthropogenic processes and inputs, such as the intrusion of warm oligotrophic water via the Loop Current, freshwater and nutrient input by the Mississippi River, and hydrocarbon inputs via natural seeps and industrial spills. Microbial plankton communities are important to pelagic food webs including in the GoM but understanding the drivers of the natural dynamics of these passively distributed microorganisms can be challenging in such a large and heterogeneous system. As part of the DEEPEND consortium, we applied high throughput 16S rRNA sequencing to investigate the spatial and temporal dynamics of pelagic microbial plankton related to several environmental conditions during two offshore cruises in 2015. Our results show dramatic community shifts across depths, especially between photic and aphotic zones. Though we only have two time points within a single year, observed temporal shifts in microbial plankton communities were restricted to the seasonally influenced epipelagic zone (0–200 m), and appear mainly driven by changes in temperature. Environmental selection in microbial plankton communities was depth-specific, with variables such as turbidity, salinity, and abundance of photosynthetic taxa strongly correlating with community structure in the epipelagic zone, while variables such as oxygen and specific nutrient concentrations were correlated with community structure at deeper depths.
NSUWorks Citation
Easson, Cole and Jose Lopez. 2019. "Depth-Dependent Environmental Drivers of Microbial Plankton Community Structure in the Northern Gulf of Mexico." Frontiers in Microbiology 9, (): Article 3175, 1-13. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2018.03175.
ORCID ID
0000-0002-1637-4125
ResearcherID
F-8809-2011
DOI
10.3389/fmicb.2018.03175
Comments
© 2019 Easson and Lopez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.