Microbial Stowaways - Historic Wooden Shipwrecks Influence Dispersal of Deep-Sea Biofilms

These sequences are from biofilms on wooden surfaces introduced to the seafloor near a historic wooden shipwreck. The convergence of biofilm formation, maturation, and dispersal on submerged wood provides opportunity to understand how wood habitat features influence biogeography processes on the seabed. Thus, the goal of this study was to determine how the presence of wooden shipwrecks influence biofilm dispersal. Specifically, this study investigated if biofilm microbiome composition, diversity, and richness changes as a function of distance from historic wooden shipwrecks, and if there is an associated shift across distances in community composition reflective of the wood-dominated habitat feature. The work also examined the impact of wood type on the formation of biofilms in the deep-sea.