Shallow water marine sediment bacterial community shifts along a natural CO2 gradient in the Mediterranean Sea Off vulcano, Italy

The effects of increasing atmospheric CO(2) on ocean ecosystems are a major environmental concern, as rapid shoaling of the carbonate saturation horizon is exposing vast areas of marine sediments to corrosive waters worldwide. Natural CO(2) gradients off Vulcano, Italy, have revealed profound ecosystem changes along rocky shore habitats as carbonate saturation levels decrease, but no investigations have yet been made of the sedimentary habitat. Here, we sampled the upper 2 cm of volcanic sand in three zones, ambient (median pCO(2) 419 µatm, minimum Omega (arag) 3.77), moderately CO(2)-enriched (median pCO(2) 592 µatm, minimum Omega (arag) 2.96), and highly CO(2)-enriched (median pCO(2) 1611 µatm, minimum Omega (arag) 0.35). We tested the hypothesis that increasing levels of seawater pCO(2) would cause significant shifts in sediment bacterial community composition, as shown recently in epilithic biofilms at the study site. In this study, 454 pyrosequencing of the V1 to V3 region of the 16S rRNA gene revealed a shift in community composition with increasing pCO(2). The relative abundances of most of the dominant genera were unaffected by the pCO(2) gradient, although there were significant differences for some 5 % of the genera present (viz. Georgenia, Lutibacter, Photobacterium, Acinetobacter, and Paenibacillus), and Shannon Diversity was greatest in sediments subject to long-term acidification (>100 years). Overall, this supports the view that globally increased ocean pCO(2) will be associated with changes in sediment bacterial community composition but that most of these organisms are resilient. However, further work is required to assess whether these results apply to other types of coastal sediments and whether the changes in relative abundance of bacterial taxa that we observed can significantly alter the biogeochemical functions of marine sediments.

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Kerfahi, Dorsaf, Hall-Spencer, Jason M, Tripathi, Binu M, Milazzo, Marco, Lee, Junghoon, Adams, Jonathan M (2014). Dataset: Shallow water marine sediment bacterial community shifts along a natural CO2 gradient in the Mediterranean Sea Off vulcano, Italy. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.836216

DOI retrieved: 2014

Additional Info

Field Value
Imported on November 29, 2024
Last update November 30, 2024
License CC-BY-3.0
Source https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.836216
Author Kerfahi, Dorsaf
Given Name Dorsaf
Family Name Kerfahi
More Authors
Hall-Spencer, Jason M
Tripathi, Binu M
Milazzo, Marco
Lee, Junghoon
Adams, Jonathan M
Source Creation 2014
Publication Year 2014
Resource Type text/tab-separated-values - filename: Kerfahi_2014
Subject Areas
Name: Biosphere

Name: Chemistry

Name: Ecology

Name: Oceans

Related Identifiers
Title: Shallow Water Marine Sediment Bacterial Community Shifts Along a Natural CO2 Gradient in the Mediterranean Sea Off Vulcano, Italy
Identifier: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-014-0368-7
Type: DOI
Relation: IsSupplementTo
Year: 2014
Source: Microbial Ecology
Authors: Kerfahi Dorsaf , Hall-Spencer Jason M , Tripathi Binu M , Milazzo Marco , Lee Junghoon , Adams Jonathan M .

Title: Shallow water marine sediment bacterial community shifts along a natural CO2 gradient in the Mediterranean Sea off Vulcano, Italy (xlsx-file 91 kB)
Identifier: hdl:10013/epic.43075.d001
Type: DOI
Relation: References
Authors: Lavigne Héloïse , Epitalon Jean-Marie , Gattuso Jean-Pierre .

Title: seacarb: seawater carbonate chemistry with R. R package version 3.0
Identifier: https://cran.r-project.org/package=seacarb
Type: DOI
Relation: References
Year: 2014
Authors: Lavigne Héloïse , Epitalon Jean-Marie , Gattuso Jean-Pierre .