North Temperate Lakes LTER. freshwater metagenome

The North Temperate Lakes team sampled three lakes and two bogs for the MIRADA project on July 1 through July 9 of 2008. These lakes represent typical large eutrophic (Mendota), mesotrophic (Trout) and oligotrophic (Sparkling) northern temperate lakes. Trout and Crystal bogs are smaller, darkly stained, dystrophic water bodies that differ in mixing rate (dimictic vs. polymictic, respectively). Lake Mendota is in an agriculturally impacted watershed within an urban environment while the other lakes and two bogs are within a forested watershed. We are interested in identifying the most abundant taxa in each lake and lake layer (epilimnion and hypolimnion). It appears that many of the taxa in the hypolimnion of lakes are novel. We are also interested in examining relationships between phylogeny of taxa and sample or lake characteristics (i.e. lake layer, chemistry, physics etc.). In addition we will be comparing eukaryotic microbial community composition based on at least three approaches: microscopic identifications, fingerprinting of 18S rRNA genes (i.e. TRFLP) and the MIRADA data. Overall, the MIRADA data is helping to bolster ongoing studies of lake bacterial and eukaryotic community composition at the North Temperate Lake Microbial Observatory (http://microbes.limnology.wisc.edu/education.html).