Abstract
The long-term effects of ocean warming on prokaryotic communities are unknown because of lack of historical data. We overcame this gap by applying a retrospective molecular analysis to the bacterial community on formalin-fixed samples from the historical Continuous Plankton Recorder archive, which is one of the longest and most geographically extensive collections of marine biological samples in the world. We showed that during the last half century, ubiquitous marine bacteria of the Vibrio genus, including Vibrio cholerae, increased in dominance within the plankton-associated bacterial community of the North Sea, where an unprecedented increase in bathing infections related to these bacteria was recently reported. Among environmental variables, increased sea surface temperature explained 45% of the variance in Vibrio data, supporting the view that ocean warming is favouring the spread of vibrios and may be the cause of the globally increasing trend in their associated diseases.
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Acknowledgements
We thank all past and present members and supporters of the CPR survey whose efforts have enabled the establishment and long-term maintenance of the CPR data set and the archived samples used in this study. We also acknowledge the voluntary contribution of the owners, masters and crews of the ships that tow the CPRs without whose help the survey would not be possible. The Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science currently operates the CPR survey. Support of the National Institutes of Health (Grant no. 2RO1A1039129-11A2-NIH) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oceans and Human Health Initiative (Grant no. S0660009) is gratefully acknowledged. This work was also supported by the Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (PRIN) and by grants from Genoa University.
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LV, CP, IB, MGH, PR and RC designed the research; LV, IB and EP performed the research; LV, CP, EP, IB, MGH and RC analysed the data; and LV and CP wrote the paper.
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Vezzulli, L., Brettar, I., Pezzati, E. et al. Long-term effects of ocean warming on the prokaryotic community: evidence from the vibrios. ISME J 6, 21–30 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2011.89
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2011.89
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