Bacterial succession in a glacier foreland of the High Arctic
Open Access
- 9 July 2009
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in The ISME Journal
- Vol. 3 (11), 1258-1268
- https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2009.71
Abstract
Succession is defined as changes in biological communities over time. It has been extensively studied in plant communities, but little is known about bacterial succession, in particular in environments such as High Arctic glacier forelands. Bacteria carry out key processes in the development of soil, biogeochemical cycling and facilitating plant colonization. In this study we sampled two roughly parallel chronosequences in the foreland of Midre Lovén glacier on Svalbard, Norway and tested whether any of several factors were associated with changes in the structure of bacterial communities, including time after glacier retreat, horizontal variation caused by the distance between chronosequences and vertical variation at two soil depths. The structures of soil bacterial communities at different locations were compared using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms of 16S rRNA genes, and the data were analyzed by sequential analysis of log-linear statistical models. Although no significant differences in community structure were detected between the two chronosequences, statistically significant differences between sampling locations in the surface and mineral soils could be demonstrated even though glacier forelands are patchy and dynamic environments. These findings suggest that bacterial succession occurs in High Arctic glacier forelands but may differ in different soil depths.Keywords
This publication has 58 references indexed in Scilit:
- Interpreting Ecological Diversity Indices Applied to Terminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Data: Insights from Simulated Microbial CommunitiesApplied and Environmental Microbiology, 2007
- Distinct Bacterial Communities Exist beneath a High Arctic Polythermal GlacierApplied and Environmental Microbiology, 2006
- Abundance of narG , nirS , nirK , and nosZ Genes of Denitrifying Bacteria during Primary Successions of a Glacier ForelandApplied and Environmental Microbiology, 2006
- Statistical methods for characterizing diversity of microbial communities by analysis of terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms of 16S rRNA genesEnvironmental Microbiology, 2006
- Microbial macroecology: highly structured prokaryotic soil assemblages in a tropical deciduous forestGlobal Ecology and Biogeography, 2005
- Biogeography of the Purple Nonsulfur Bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustrisApplied and Environmental Microbiology, 2003
- Ecologically meaningful transformations for ordination of species dataOecologia, 2001
- The Geology of SvalbardArctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, 1999
- Causes and Ecosystem Consequences of Multiple Pathways of Primary Succession at Glacier Bay, AlaskaEcology, 1995
- Will similar forests develop on similar sites?Canadian Journal of Botany, 1985