Drivers shaping the diversity and biogeography of total and active bacterial communities in the South China Sea

To test the hypothesis that different drivers shape the diversity and biogeography of the total and active bacterial community, we examined the bacterial community composition along two transects, one from the inner Pearl River estuary to the open waters of the South China Sea (SCS) and the other from the Luzon Strait to the SCS basin, using 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA and 16S rRNA gene (V1-3 regions) and thereby, characterizing the active and total bacterial community, respectively. The diversity and biogeographic patterns differed substantially between the active and total bacterial communities. Although the composition of both, the total and active bacterial community was strongly correlated with environmental factors and weakly correlated with geographic distance, the active bacterial community displayed higher environmental sensitivity than the total community and particularly, a greater distance effect largely caused by the active assemblage from deep waters. The 16S rRNA v...