ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Extreme Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1687453
This article is part of the Research TopicRising Stars in Geomicrobiology: Microbial Life in Subsurface, Seep and Hydrothermal EcosystemsView all 6 articles
Heterogeneity of the horizontal environment drives community assemblages and species coexistence of prokaryotic communities in cold seep sediments
Provisionally accepted
- Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
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Microbes in cold seep sediments play important roles in methane oxidation and the global geochemical cycle, but little is known about microbial distribution and community assembly in the horizontal sediment profile. This study conducted a comprehensive investigation of prokaryotic community diversity in sediments from different habitats in a cold seep ecosystem of the South China Sea. Compared to other sites, the prokaryotic community in the methane seep site showed a lower α-diversity. Halobacterota was dominant in methane seep site, while higher abundances of Chloroflexi and Asgardarchaeota were observed in the faunal sites. The assembly process of the bacterial community in the methane seep site was mainly a stochastic process, while the archaeal community was mainly formed by a deterministic process. The prokaryotic community in faunal sites was influenced by both stochastic and deterministic processes. The heterogeneity of the horizontal environment such as the content of CH4, Ba2+, total inorganic carbon, and SO42− influenced prokaryotic community diversity and drove the community assembly processes. Additionally, bacterial network showed higher connectivity and species interactions in methane seep site than in other sites, but archaea did the opposite. Overall, this study revealed how prokaryotes build communities in different cold seep habitats.
Keywords: Cold seep sediment, Horizontal environmental heterogeneity, community diversity, community assembly, Species Coexistence
Received: 17 Aug 2025; Accepted: 23 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wu, Feng, Huang, Zhong, Li and Zhang. 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: Jingchun Feng, fengjc@gdut.edu.cn
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