SPEEDY bacterioplankton

Urbanization is transforming and fragmenting natural environments, driving changes in biological communities both through alterations in local environmental conditions as well as by changing the capacity of species to reach specific habitats. Here we study a bacterioplankton metacommunity in shallow ponds along an urbanization gradient to answer the following questions: (1) does urbanization change microbial diversity and/or composition? (2) at which spatial scale is urbanization structuring bacterioplankton communities? and (3) what are the factors driving community composition in an urbanization context? We estimated the relative importance of local factors, regional factors (linear and non-linear trends) and urbanization (built-up area) on bacterioplankton communities, with urbanization quantified at two spatial scales (local – 200x200 m and regional – 3x3 km). We characterized bacterial community composition by 454 pyrosequecing of the 16s rRNA gene.