- Title
- Climate dictates microbial community composition and diversity in Australian biological soil crusts (biocrusts)
- Creator
- Chilton, Angela M.; Nguyen, Suong T. T.; Nelson, Tiffanie M.; Pearson, Leanne A.; Neilan, Brett A.
- Relation
- ARC.FF0883440 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FF0883440
- Relation
- Environmental Microbiology Vol. 24, Issue 11, p. 5467-5482
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.16098
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- The soil surface of drylands can typically be colonized by cyanobacteria and other microbes, forming biological soil crusts or ‘biocrusts’. Biocrusts provide critical benefits to ecosystems and are a common component of the largely arid and semi-arid Australian continent. Yet, their distribution and the parameters that shape their microbial composition have not been investigated. We present here the first detailed description of Australia's biocrust microbiome assessed from 15 sites across the continent using 16S rRNA sequencing. The most abundant bacterial phyla from all sites were Cyanobacteria, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi and Bacteroidetes. Cyanobacterial communities from northern regions were more diverse and unclassified cyanobacteria were a noticeable feature of northern biocrusts. Segregation between northern and southern regions was largely due to the differential abundance of Microcoleus spp., with M. paludosus dominating in the north and M. vaginatus dominating in the south. The geographical shifts in bacterial composition and diversity were correlated to seasonal temperatures and summer rainfall. Our findings provide an initial reference for sampling strategies to maximize access to bacterial genetic diversity. As hubs for essential ecosystem services, further investigation into biocrusts in arid and semi-arid regions may yield discoveries of genetic mechanisms that combat increases in warming due to climate change.
- Subject
- soil surface; biocrusts; climate; ecosystems
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1478043
- Identifier
- uon:50086
- Identifier
- ISSN:1462-2912
- Rights
- © 2022 The Authors. Environmental Microbiology published by Society for Applied Microbiology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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