Variability in bacteria and virus-like particle abundances during purging of unconfined aquifers.

Standard methodologies for sampling the physicochemical conditions of groundwater recommend purging a bore for three bore volumes to avoid sampling the stagnant water within a bore and instead gain samples representative of the aquifer. However, there are currently no methodological standards addressing the amount of purging required to gain representative biological samples to assess groundwater bacterial and viral abundances. The objective of this study was to examine how bacterial and viral abundances change during the purging of bore volumes. Six bores infiltrating into unconfined aquifers were pumped for five or six bore volumes each and bacteria and virus-like particles (VLPs) were enumerated from each bore volume using flow cytometry. In examination of the individual bores trends in bacterial abundances were observed to increase, decrease, or remain constant with each purged bore volume. Furthermore, triplicates taken at each bore volume indicated substantial variations in VLP and bacterial abundances that are often larger than the differences between bore volumes. This indicates a high level of small scale heterogeneity in microbial community abundance in groundwater samples, and we suggest that this may be an intrinsic feature of bore biology. The heterogeneity observed may be driven by bottom up processes (variability in the distribution of organic and inorganic nutrients), top-down processes (grazing and viral lysis), physical heterogeneities in the bore, or technical artifacts associated with the purging process. We suggest that a more detailed understanding of the ecology underpinning this variability is required to adequately describe the microbiological characteristics of groundwater ecosystems.

Confined aquifers as viral reservoirs.

Knowledge about viral diversity and abundance in deep groundwater reserves is limited. We found that the viral community inhabiting a deep confined aquifer in South Australia was more similar to reclaimed water communities than to the viral communities in the overlying unconfined aquifer community. This similarity was driven by high relative occurrence of the single-stranded DNA viral groups Circoviridae, Geminiviridae and Microviridae, which include many known plant and animal pathogens. These groups were present in a 1500-year-old water situated 80 m below the surface, which suggests the potential for long-term survival and spread of potentially pathogenic viruses in deep, confined groundwater. Obtaining a broader understanding of potentially pathogenic viral communities within aquifers is particularly important given the ability of viruses to spread within groundwater ecosystems.

High nutrient transport and cycling potential revealed in the microbial metagenome of Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) faeces.

Metagenomic analysis was used to examine the taxonomic diversity and metabolic potential of an Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) gut microbiome. Bacteria comprised 98% of classifiable sequences and of these matches to Firmicutes (80%) were dominant, with Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria representing 8% and 2% of matches respectively. The relative proportion of Firmicutes (80%) to Bacteriodetes (2%) is similar to that in previous studies of obese humans and obese mice, suggesting the gut microbiome may confer a predisposition towards the excess body fat that is needed for thermoregulation within the cold oceanic habitats foraged by Australian sea lions. Core metabolic functions, including carbohydrate utilisation (14%), protein metabolism (9%) and DNA metabolism (7%) dominated the metagenome, but in comparison to human and fish gut microbiomes there was a significantly higher proportion of genes involved in phosphorus metabolism (2.4%) and iron scavenging mechanisms (1%). When sea lions defecate at sea, the relatively high nutrient metabolism potential of bacteria in their faeces may accelerate the dissolution of nutrients from faecal particles, enhancing their persistence in the euphotic zone where they are available to stimulate marine production.

Metagenomic comparison of microbial communities inhabiting confined and unconfined aquifer ecosystems.

A metagenomic analysis of two aquifer systems located under a dairy farming region was performed to examine to what extent the composition and function of microbial communities varies between confined and surface-influenced unconfined groundwater ecosystems. A fundamental shift in taxa was seen with an overrepresentation of Rhodospirillales, Rhodocyclales, Chlorobia and Circovirus in the unconfined aquifer, while Deltaproteobacteria and Clostridiales were overrepresented in the confined aquifer. A relative overrepresentation of metabolic processes including antibiotic resistance (ß-lactamase genes), lactose and glucose utilization and DNA replication were observed in the unconfined aquifer, while flagella production, phosphate metabolism and starch uptake pathways were all overrepresented in the confined aquifer. These differences were likely driven by differences in the nutrient status and extent of exposure to contaminants of the two groundwater systems. However, when compared with freshwater, ocean, sediment and animal gut metagenomes, the unconfined and confined aquifers were taxonomically and metabolically more similar to each other than to any other environment. This suggests that intrinsic features of groundwater ecosystems, including low oxygen levels and a lack of sunlight, have provided specific niches for evolution to create unique microbial communities. Obtaining a broader understanding of the structure and function of microbial communities inhabiting different groundwater systems is particularly important given the increased need for managing groundwater reserves of potable water.

Substrate type determines metagenomic profiles from diverse chemical habitats.

Environmental parameters drive phenotypic and genotypic frequency variations in microbial communities and thus control the extent and structure of microbial diversity. We tested the extent to which microbial community composition changes are controlled by shifting physiochemical properties within a hypersaline lagoon. We sequenced four sediment metagenomes from the Coorong, South Australia from samples which varied in salinity by 99 Practical Salinity Units (PSU), an order of magnitude in ammonia concentration and two orders of magnitude in microbial abundance. Despite the marked divergence in environmental parameters observed between samples, hierarchical clustering of taxonomic and metabolic profiles of these metagenomes showed striking similarity between the samples (>89%). Comparison of these profiles to those derived from a wide variety of publically available datasets demonstrated that the Coorong sediment metagenomes were similar to other sediment, soil, biofilm and microbial mat samples regardless of salinity (>85% similarity). Overall, clustering of solid substrate and water metagenomes into discrete similarity groups based on functional potential indicated that the dichotomy between water and solid matrices is a fundamental determinant of community microbial metabolism that is not masked by salinity, nutrient concentration or microbial abundance.

Iron defecation by sperm whales stimulates carbon export in the Southern Ocean.

The iron-limited Southern Ocean plays an important role in regulating atmospheric CO(2) levels. Marine mammal respiration has been proposed to decrease the efficiency of the Southern Ocean biological pump by returning photosynthetically fixed carbon to the atmosphere. Here, we show that by consuming prey at depth and defecating iron-rich liquid faeces into the photic zone, sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) instead stimulate new primary production and carbon export to the deep ocean. We estimate that Southern Ocean sperm whales defecate 50 tonnes of iron into the photic zone each year. Molar ratios of C(export):Fe(added) determined during natural ocean fertilization events are used to estimate the amount of carbon exported to the deep ocean in response to the iron defecated by sperm whales. We find that Southern Ocean sperm whales stimulate the export of 4 × 10(5) tonnes of carbon per year to the deep ocean and respire only 2 × 10(5) tonnes of carbon per year. By enhancing new primary production, the populations of 12 000 sperm whales in the Southern Ocean act as a carbon sink, removing 2 × 10(5) tonnes more carbon from the atmosphere than they add during respiration. The ability of the Southern Ocean to act as a carbon sink may have been diminished by large-scale removal of sperm whales during industrial whaling.