Liang Jie-Liang, Li Xiao-Jing, Shu Hao-Yue, Wang Pandeng, Kuang Jia-Liang, Liu Jun, Zhang Miao-Miao, Shu Wen-Sheng, Huang Li-Nan
Guangdong Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, P. R. China.
FEMS Microbiol Ecol. 2017 Oct 1;93(10). doi: 10.1093/femsec/fix124.
Microbial community composition is essential for aquatic ecosystem functions and has been explored across diverse environments and various spatial scales. However, documented patterns are often based on samples from spatially/geographically separated locations or sites. Here, we define sampling volume as spatial scale and examine (by Illumina 16S rRNA sequencing) microbial community composition over a scale of 1 mL to 10 L in an acid mine drainage. β-Diversity analysis revealed that all samples grouped very tightly according to spatial scales and variations between every two scales were significant. Notably, mean β-diversity within each group was negatively correlated with spatial scales, indicating patchy microbial distribution. Partition of β-diversity further revealed that it was the relative abundances of some microbial taxa that largely changed among spatial scales. Phylogenetic analysis showed that microbial lineages were not randomly distributed, but displayed a tendency of more phylogenetically clustering at smaller spatial scales. Thus, we documented fine-scale spatial patterns in microbial community composition within a continuous aquatic environment, which may have practical implications for adequate sampling of aquatic systems in future studies.
微生物群落组成对于水生生态系统功能至关重要，并且已在各种不同环境和空间尺度下得到研究。然而，已记录的模式通常基于来自空间/地理上分离的位置或地点的样本。在此，我们将采样体积定义为空间尺度，并（通过Illumina 16S rRNA测序）研究了酸性矿山排水中从1毫升到10升尺度范围内的微生物群落组成。β-多样性分析表明，所有样本根据空间尺度紧密聚类，每两个尺度之间的差异显著。值得注意的是，每组内的平均β-多样性与空间尺度呈负相关，表明微生物分布呈斑块状。β-多样性的分解进一步表明，正是一些微生物类群的相对丰度在空间尺度上发生了很大变化。系统发育分析表明，微生物谱系并非随机分布，而是在较小空间尺度上显示出更多系统发育聚类的趋势。因此，我们记录了连续水生环境中微生物群落组成的精细尺度空间模式，这可能对未来研究中水生系统的充分采样具有实际意义。
