Effects of patch connectivity and heterogeneity on metacommunity structure of planktonic bacteria and viruses

Dispersal limitation is generally considered to have little influence on the spatial structure of biodiversity in microbial metacommunities. This notion derives mainly from the analysis of spatial patterns in the field, but experimental tests of dispersal limitation using natural communities are rare for prokaryotes and, to our knowledge, non-existent for viruses. We studied the effects of dispersal intensity (three levels) and patch heterogeneity (two levels) on the structure of replicate experimental metacommunities of bacteria and viruses using outdoor mesocosms with plankton communities from natural ponds and lakes. Low levels of dispersal resulted in a decrease in the compositional differences (beta diversity) among the communities of both bacteria and viruses, but we found no effects of patch heterogeneity. The reductions in beta diversity are unlikely to be a result of mass effects and only partly explained by indirect dispersal-mediated interactions with phytoplankton and zooplankton. Our results suggest that even a very limited exchange among local communities can alter the trajectory of bacterial and viral communities at small temporal and spatial scales.

[1]  L. Wegley,et al.  Movement of Viruses between Biomes , 2004, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

[2]  S. Allison,et al.  Drivers of bacterial β-diversity depend on spatial scale , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[3]  L. Meester,et al.  Body size and dispersal mode as key traits determining metacommunity structure of aquatic organisms. , 2012, Ecology letters.

[4]  K. Jürgens,et al.  Predation as a shaping force for the phenotypic and genotypic composition of planktonic bacteria , 2002, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.

[5]  Wim Vyverman,et al.  The power of species sorting: Local factors drive bacterial community composition over a wide range of spatial scales , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[6]  J. Lennon,et al.  Dormancy contributes to the maintenance of microbial diversity , 2010, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[7]  L. Tranvik,et al.  Structure and Function of Bacterial Communities Emerging from Different Sources under Identical Conditions , 2006, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

[8]  K. Eric Wommack,et al.  Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA PCR as a Tool for Assessment of Marine Viral Richness , 2008, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

[9]  L. Meester,et al.  Rapid Daphnia-mediated changes in microbial community structure: an experimental study. , 2002, FEMS microbiology ecology.

[10]  G. Muyzer,et al.  Optimization of Terminal-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis for Complex Marine Bacterioplankton Communities and Comparison with Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis , 1999, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

[11]  Curtis A Suttle,et al.  Sequence Analysis of Marine Virus Communities Reveals that Groups of Related Algal Viruses Are Widely Distributed in Nature , 2002, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

[12]  P. Chesson.  Mechanisms of Maintenance of Species Diversity , 2000 .

[13]  P. Peres‐Neto,et al.  The role of environmental and spatial processes in structuring lake communities from bacteria to fish. , 2006, Ecology.

[14]  Forest Rohwer,et al.  Here a virus, there a virus, everywhere the same virus? , 2005, Trends in microbiology.

[15]  S. Langenheder,et al.  Regulation of bacterial biomass and community structure by metazoan and protozoan predation , 2001 .

[16]  Jonathan M. Chase,et al.  The metacommunity concept: a framework for multi-scale community ecology , 2004 .

[17]  S. Langenheder,et al.  The role of environmental and spatial factors for the composition of aquatic bacterial communities. , 2007, Ecology.

[18]  D. M. Ward,et al.  Geographical isolation in hot spring cyanobacteria. , 2003, Environmental microbiology.

[19]  K. Holmfeldt,et al.  Large Variabilities in Host Strain Susceptibility and Phage Host Range Govern Interactions between Lytic Marine Phages and Their Flavobacterium Hosts , 2007, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

[20]  J. Diniz‐Filho,et al.  Geographical patterns of micro-organismal community structure: are diatoms ubiquitously distributed across boreal streams? , 2010 .

[21]  E. Decaestecker,et al.  Dispersal-mediated trophic interactions can generate apparent patterns of dispersal limitation in aquatic metacommunities. , 2012, Ecology letters.

[22]  T. Fenchel,et al.  The Ubiquity of Small Species: Patterns of Local and Global Diversity , 2004 .

[23]  John W. Taylor,et al.  Geographic Barriers Isolate Endemic Populations of Hyperthermophilic Archaea , 2003, Science.

[24]  Michel Loreau,et al.  Community Patterns in Source‐Sink Metacommunities , 2003, The American Naturalist.

[25]  K. McMahon,et al.  Species-sorting may explain an apparent minimal effect of immigration on freshwater bacterial community dynamics. , 2009, Environmental microbiology.

[26]  T. Bell.  Experimental tests of the bacterial distance–decay relationship , 2010, The ISME Journal.

[27]  E. Lindström,et al.  Species sorting affects bacterioplankton community composition as determined by 16S rDNA and 16S rRNA fingerprints , 2010, The ISME Journal.

[28]  Curtis A Suttle,et al.  Nearly Identical Bacteriophage Structural Gene Sequences Are Widely Distributed in both Marine and Freshwater Environments , 2005, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

[29]  E. Lindström,et al.  The Importance of Dispersal for Bacterial Community Composition and Functioning , 2011, PloS one.

[30]  Patrick L. Thompson,et al.  Warming shifts top-down and bottom-up control of pond food web structure and function , 2012, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[31]  K. Wommack,et al.  Virioplankton: Viruses in Aquatic Ecosystems , 2000, Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews.