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ToolsBesemer, Katharina, Singer, Gabriel, Quince, Christopher, Bertuzzo, Enrico, Sloan, William and Battin, Tom J. (2013) Headwaters are critical reservoirs of microbial diversity for fluvial networks. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280 (1771). ISSN 0962-8452
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
Streams and rivers form conspicuous networks on the Earth and are among nature's most effective integrators. Their dendritic structure reaches into the terrestrial landscape and accumulates water and sediment en route from abundant headwater streams to a single river mouth. The prevailing view over the last decades has been that biological diversity also accumulates downstream. Here, we show that this pattern does not hold for fluvial biofilms, which are the dominant mode of microbial life in streams and rivers and which fulfil critical ecosystem functions therein. Using 454 pyrosequencing on benthic biofilms from 114 streams, we found that microbial diversity decreased from headwaters downstream and especially at confluences. We suggest that the local environment and biotic interactions may modify the influence of metacommunity connectivity on local biofilm biodiversity throughout the network. In addition, there was a high degree of variability in species composition among headwater streamsthat could not be explained by geographical distance between catchments. This suggests that the dendritic nature of fluvial networks constrains the distributional patterns of microbial diversity similar to that of animals. Our observations highlight the contributions that headwaters make in the maintenance of microbial biodiversity in fluvial networks.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | alpha diversity,beta diversity,biofilms,fluvial networks,headwaters,microbial biodiversity,immunology and microbiology(all),biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology(all),environmental science(all),agricultural and biological sciences(all),sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2400 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Sep 2022 14:30 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Oct 2022 19:31 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/88047 |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rspb.2013.1760 |
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