Water availability shapes edaphic and lithic cyanobacterial communities in the Atacama Desert
Autor: | Ulf Karsten, Sebastian Achilles, Patrick Jung, Laura Briegel-Williams, Michael Schermer, Burkhard Büdel, Peter Leinweber, Karen Baumann, Lukas W. Lehnert, Jörg Bendix |
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Rok vydání: | 2019 |
Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Nature reserve National park Ecology 010604 marine biology & hydrobiology Water Edaphic Plant Science Lithium Aquatic Science Biology Cyanobacteria Deserts and xeric shrublands 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Arid RNA Ribosomal 16S Soil water Precipitation Species richness Desert Climate Soil Microbiology |
Zdroj: | Journal of Phycology. 55:1306-1318 |
ISSN: | 1529-8817 0022-3646 |
Popis: | In the Atacama Desert, cyanobacteria grow on various substrates such as soils (edaphic) and quartz or granitoid stones (lithic). Both edaphic and lithic cyanobacterial communities have been described but no comparison between both communities of the same locality has yet been undertaken. In the present study, we compared both cyanobacterial communities along a precipitation gradient ranging from the arid National Park Pan de Azúcar (PA), which resembles a large fog oasis in the Atacama Desert extending to the semiarid Santa Gracia Natural Reserve (SG) further south, as well as along a precipitation gradient within PA. Various microscopic techniques, as well as culturing and partial 16S rRNA sequencing, were applied to identify 21 cyanobacterial species; the diversity was found to decline as precipitation levels decreased. Additionally, under increasing xeric stress, lithic community species composition showed higher divergence from the surrounding edaphic community, resulting in indigenous hypolithic and chasmoendolithic cyanobacterial communities. We conclude that rain and fog water, respectively, cause contrasting trends regarding cyanobacterial species richness in the edaphic and lithic microhabitats. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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