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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.

Sec. Extreme Microbiology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1649514

This article is part of the Research TopicRising Stars in Geomicrobiology: Microbial Life in Subsurface, Seep and Hydrothermal EcosystemsView all 4 articles

Hydrodynamic flow and benthic boundary layer interactions shape the microbial community in Milos shallow water hydrothermal vents

Provisionally accepted
  • 1University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
  • 2Max-Planck-Institut fur marine Mikrobiologie, Bremen, Germany
  • 3Middle East Technical University, Mersin, Türkiye
  • 4Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, United States
  • 5Sorbonne Universite, Paris, France
  • 6California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States
  • 7Universita Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
  • 8National Research Council - Institute of Marine Biological Resources and Biotechnologies, Ancona, Italy
  • 9Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, United States
  • 10Earth-Life Sciences Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
  • 11Department of Marine and Coastal Science, Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick, United States
  • 12Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, United States
  • 13Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick, United States
  • 14Department of Marine and Coastal Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

In shallow-water hydrothermal vents, the dynamic interface between the discharged reduced hydrothermal fluids and the oxidized seawater allows the establishment of gradients capable of supporting diverse and complex microbial mats. Due to their shallow depths and proximity to land masses, shallow vents are heavily influenced by dynamic forcing, tidal fluctuations, and episodic events (e.g. storms, tides, etc). Although several studies have investigated the microbial communities inhabiting shallow vents in the last decades, less is known about how microbial communities respond to episodic events and how the complex interplay of physical and chemical drivers shapes the establishment and structure of microbial biofilms in these systems.Here we present data combining the taxonomic and functional diversity of the white microbial mats commonly found in sulfide rich shallow-water hydrothermal vents in Paleochori Bay (Milos Island, Greece), using a combined approach of 16S rRNA transcript amplicon sequencing (from RNA) and shotgun metagenomic sequencing (from which 16S rRNA genes were retrieved). We show that the white microbial mats of Milos shallow-water hydrothermal 1 vents are dominated by Epsilonproteobacteria, now classified as Campylobacterota, with metabolic functions associated with chemolithoautotrophic lifestyles and exposed to a diverse array of viral communities. Taxonomic names follow the classification available at the time of analysis (2012). We explore how dynamic forcing and storm events influence microbial community restructuring and turn-over, and provide evidence that dynamic interactions with the benthic boundary layer play a key role in controlling the spatial distribution of taxa. Overall, our results show diverse processes through which geodynamic events influence microbial taxonomic and functional diversity.

Keywords: shallow-water hydrothermal vents, Microbial Diversity, Metagenomics, Fluid-mixing, microbiome, ripples, Storms, Benthic boundary layer

Received: 18 Jun 2025; Accepted: 08 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Pelliciari Silva, Migliaccio, Barosa, Gallucci, Yücel, Foustoukos, Le Bris, Bartlett, D'Alessandro, Giovannelli and Vetriani. 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:
Donato Giovannelli, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
Costantino Vetriani, Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick, United States

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