Environmental switching during biofilm development in a cold seep system and functional determinants of species sorting

The functional basis for species sorting theory remains elusive, especially for microbial community assembly in deep-sea environments. Using artificial surface-based biofilm models, our recent work revealed taxonomic succession during biofilm development in a newly defined cold seep system, the Thuwal cold seeps II, which comprises a brine pool and the adjacent normal bottom water (NBW) to form a metacommunity via the potential immigration of organisms from one patch to another. Here, we designed an experiment to investigate the effects of environmental switching between the brine pool and the NBW on biofilm assembly, which could reflect environmental filtering effects during bacterial immigration to new environments. Analyses of 16S rRNA genes of 71 biofilm samples suggested that the microbial composition of biofilms established in new environments was determined by both the source community and the incubation conditions. Moreover, a comparison of 18 metagenomes provided evidence for b...物种分选理论的功能基础至今仍未明确，针对深海环境中的微生物群落组装研究而言尤为如此。本团队此前借助基于人工表面的生物膜模型开展研究，在新定义的图瓦尔冷泉II（Thuwal cold seeps II）系统中揭示了生物膜发育过程中的分类群演替规律；该系统包含盐水池与邻近的正常底层水（normal bottom water, NBW），可通过生物在不同斑块间的潜在迁移形成复合群落（metacommunity）。本研究设计实验，探究盐水池与正常底层水之间的环境切换对生物膜组装的影响，该实验可反映细菌迁移至新环境过程中的环境过滤效应。对71份生物膜样本的16S核糖体RNA基因分析结果显示，在新环境中形成的生物膜其微生物群落组成同时受来源群落与培养条件的共同调控。此外，对18个宏基因组（metagenomes）的比较分析为...提供了证据