Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Aug;19(8):3132-3151.
doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.13788. Epub 2017 Jun 22.

Functional structure of the bromeliad tank microbiome is strongly shaped by local geochemical conditions

Stilianos Louca  1   2 , Saulo M S Jacques  3   4 , Aliny P F Pires  3 , Juliana S Leal  3   5 , Angélica L González  6 , Michael Doebeli  1   2   7 , Vinicius F Farjalla  3
Affiliations

Functional structure of the bromeliad tank microbiome is strongly shaped by local geochemical conditions

Stilianos Louca et al. Environ Microbiol. 2017 Aug.

Abstract

Phytotelmata in tank-forming Bromeliaceae plants are regarded as potential miniature models for aquatic ecology, but detailed investigations of their microbial communities are rare. Hence, the biogeochemistry in bromeliad tanks remains poorly understood. Here we investigate the structure of bacterial and archaeal communities inhabiting the detritus within the tanks of two bromeliad species, Aechmea nudicaulis and Neoregelia cruenta, from a Brazilian sand dune forest. We used metagenomic sequencing for functional community profiling and 16S sequencing for taxonomic profiling. We estimated the correlation between functional groups and various environmental variables, and compared communities between bromeliad species. In all bromeliads, microbial communities spanned a metabolic network adapted to oxygen-limited conditions, including all denitrification steps, ammonification, sulfate respiration, methanogenesis, reductive acetogenesis and anoxygenic phototrophy. Overall, CO2 reducers dominated in abundance over sulfate reducers, and anoxygenic phototrophs largely outnumbered oxygenic photoautotrophs. Functional community structure correlated strongly with environmental variables, between and within a single bromeliad species. Methanogens and reductive acetogens correlated with detrital volume and canopy coverage, and exhibited higher relative abundances in N. cruenta. A comparison of bromeliads to freshwater lake sediments and soil from around the world, revealed stark differences in terms of taxonomic as well as functional microbial community structure.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

LinkOut - more resources