Abstract
Lake Baikal is the deepest (~1.6 km) and most voluminous freshwater reservoir on Earth. Compared to plankton, its benthos remains poorly explored. Here, we ask whether latitude and/or depth determine benthic microbial community structure and how Baikal communities compare to those of other freshwater, brackish and marine sediments. To answer, we collected sediment upper layers (0–1 cm) across a ~600 km North-South transect covering the three basins of the lake and from littoral to bathybenthic depths (0.5–1450 m). Analysis of 16S and 18S rRNA gene amplicon sequences revealed communities with high richness and evenness where rare operational taxonomic units (OTUs) collectively dominated. Archaea represented up to 25% or prokaryotic sequences. Baikal sediments harbored typically marine eukaryotic and prokaryotic OTUs recently identified in some lakes (diplonemids, Bolidophyceae, Mamiellales, SAR202, marine-like Synechococcus, Pelagibacterales) but also SAR324, Syndiniales and Radiolaria. We hypothesize that, beyond the salinity barrier, adaptation to oligotrophy explains the presence of these otherwise typically marine lineages. Baikal core benthic communities were relatively stable across sites and seemed not determined by depth or latitude. Comparative analyses with other freshwater, brackish and marine prokaryotic sediment communities confirmed the distinctness of Baikal benthos, which include elements of similarity to marine and hydrothermally influenced systems.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Luis J. Galindo and Anabel Lopez-Archilla for help and discussions during our 2017 limnological cruise, and Philippe Deschamps for technical bioinformatic support. We thank the crew of the R/V G. Titov for their professionalism and efficiency onboard and the director of the Limnological Institute at Irkusk for logistical assistance. This research was funded by the European Research Council Grants ProtistWorld (322669, PL-G) and PlastEvol (787904, DM) as well as the Russian State grant 0345-2016-0009 (NVA).
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PLG, DM and NVA designed the work and organized the limnological cruise. PLG, GR, NVA and KEV collected sediment samples. PB and GR purified DNA and carried out PCR reactions for amplicon sequencing. GR carried out the bioinformatic analysis of amplicon sequences, statistical analyses and wrote an early draft of the manuscript. PLG wrote the final manuscript. All authors read, critically commented and approved the final manuscript.
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Reboul, G., Moreira, D., Annenkova, N.V. et al. Marine signature taxa and core microbial community stability along latitudinal and vertical gradients in sediments of the deepest freshwater lake. ISME J 15, 3412–3417 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-021-01011-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-021-01011-y
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