Abstract
Growing attention in aquatic ecology is focusing on biogeographic patterns in microorganisms and whether these potential patterns can be explained within the framework of general ecology. The long-standing microbiologist’s credo ‘Everything is everywhere, but, the environment selects’ suggests that dispersal is not limiting for microbes, but that the environment is the primary determining factor in microbial community composition. Advances in molecular techniques have provided new evidence that biogeographic patterns exist in microbes and that dispersal limitation may actually have an important role, yet more recent study using extremely deep sequencing predicts that indeed everything is everywhere. Using a long-term field study of the ‘invasive’ marine haptophyte Prymnesium parvum, we characterize the environmental niche of P. parvum in a subtropical impoundment in the southern United States. Our analysis contributes to a growing body of evidence that indicates a primary role for environmental conditions, but not dispersal, in the lake-wide abundances and seasonal bloom patterns in this globally important microbe.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Paul Mauck, Jeff Boxrucker and Greg Summers (Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, ODWC) who were instrumental in initiating this study, and Greg Summers, Matt Mauck and Gene Gilliland for support. We also thank the staff of UOBS for technical and logistical assistance; Karen Glenn, Emily Remmel and Ann Morris for technical assistance; Dave Caron, Adriane Jones and Vikki Campbell for invaluable advice and assistance during every aspect of this project; and Francisco Acosta and Jim Grover for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. Financial assistance was provided by the ODWC, through the Sport Fish Restoration Program (Grant F-61-R), the National Science Foundation (DEB-1011454) and the University of Oklahoma Office of the Vice President for Research.
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David Hambright, K., Beyer, J., Easton, J. et al. The niche of an invasive marine microbe in a subtropical freshwater impoundment. ISME J 9, 256–264 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2014.103
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2014.103
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