Microbial polysaccharide utilization in sandy surface sediments ...

• Main Author: Miksch, Sebastian
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Universität Bremen 2022
• Subjects: marine sediments; marine microbiology; molecular ecology; Bioinformatic; seasonality; Svalbard; polysaccharides; 570
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.26092/elib/2530; https://media.suub.uni-bremen.de/handle/elib/7220

The shallow waters over continental shelves are a hotspot of marine primary production. In these regions, significant amounts of carbon fixed in the water column is exported to the sediment and, together with benthic primary production, feeds heterotrophic microbes. Much of the organic matter is comprised of polysaccharides produced by algae, which can be very complex. Since the organic matter is not accumulating, utilization of polysaccharides by benthic microbes must be highly relevant for the marine carbon cycle. In this thesis, I first studied the dynamics of benthic microbial communities in sands by assessing taxonomic changes over the seasonal cycle in temperate and polar regions. Compared to the rapid substrate driven successions of coastal bacterioplankton communities during and after spring blooms, there was very little seasonal change in the taxonomic composition of the benthic bacterial community. This comparison indicated fundamental differences in the ecological mechanisms driving pelagic and ...