ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Aquatic Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1552305
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Biological Pump: A Hunt For Microbial Key Players Involved in Ocean Carbon and Nutrient FluxesView all 5 articles
Quantitative microbial taxonomy across particle size, depth, and oxygen concentration
Provisionally accepted
- 1Center for Environmental Science, University of Maryland, College Park, Cambridge, United States
- 2Branchpoint Biosciences, Los Angeles, CA, United States
- 3Texas A and M University, College Station, Texas, United States
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Using water column samples from the East Pacific Rise, we examine microbial composition and organic matter quantitatively for seven size fractions of particles, using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing with standards. This approach allows the estimation of numbers of bacteria per liter and numbers of bacteria per µg organic C for a range of particle sizes. Quantitative abundance estimates found that ostensibly particle attached bacteria such as Bacteroidetes and Planctomycetes were actually equally abundant in the free-living fraction and suspended particles but were swamped out by high Proteobacteria abundances in relative abundance data for the free-living fraction. These data support existing models where there are high levels of exchange between particleattached and free-living communities. This research, as it describes the microbial community on particles, is within scope of the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.
Keywords: Marine aggregates, East Pacific Rise, Oxygen deficient zone, Size fractionation, organic matter, microbial communities, Microbial Diversity
Received: 27 Dec 2024; Accepted: 29 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Huanca Valenzuela, Fuchsman, Tully, sylvan and Cram. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jacob A Cram, Center for Environmental Science, University of Maryland, College Park, Cambridge, United States
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