Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

SS14 Microbial Diversity (Disciplinary Connections)

Date: Tuesday, February 13, 2001, Time: 2:00:00 PM

Location: Mesilla

Crump, B, C, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, USA, bcrump@mbl.edu

Hobbie, J, E, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, USA, jhobbie@mbl.edu

Zwart, G, , Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Nieuwersluis, Netherlands, zwart@cl.nioo.knaw.nl

Hopkinson, C, S, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, USA, chopkins@mbl.edu

MICROBIAL BIOGEOGRAPHY ALONG AN ESTUARINE GRADIENT IN THE PARKER RIVER AND PLUM ISLAND SOUND, MASSACHUSETTS

Planktonic microbial communities in estuaries are composed of freshwater and marine organisms as well as organisms with estuarine origins. We hypothesized that the composition of an estuarine microbial community would change in response to seasonal events including spring and summer phytoplankton blooms and spikes in river flow, autumn marsh senescence and winter ice formation. A set of monthly samples including two high-resolution sampling series in the summer and autumn, 2000 were collected along an estuarine gradient in Northern Massachusetts consisting of the Parker River, Plum Island Sound and the Gulf of Maine. Bacterioplankton were analyzed for community composition (denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and clone library sequencing of 16S rDNA) and rate of production (3H-leucine incorporation rates). Initial results demonstrate the mixing of freshwater and marine bacterial communities in the estuary, and show little evidence of a unique estuarine bacterial community in the winter months. Many Parker River bacterial 16S rDNA sequences were found to be members of globally distributed phylogenetic clusters of freshwater bacteria identified in a recent review of freshwater bacterioplankton diversity.

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Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

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