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Appl Environ Microbiol, July 1998, p. 2560-2565, Vol. 64, No. 7
0099-2240/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Spatial and Temporal Variation of Phenanthrene-Degrading Bacteria in Intertidal Sediments

Gina Berardesco,1 Sonya Dyhrman,2 Eugene Gallagher,1 and Michael P. Shiaris2,*

Environmental Sciences Program1 and Department of Biology,2 University of Massachusetts at Boston, Boston, Massachusetts 02125

Received 6 November 1997/Accepted 24 April 1998

Phenanthrene-degrading bacteria were isolated from a 1-m2 intertidal sediment site in Boston Harbor. Samples were taken six times over 2 years. A total of 432 bacteria were isolated and characterized by biochemical testing. When clustered on the basis of phenotypic characteristics, the isolates could be separated into 68 groups at a similarity level of approximately 70%. Several groups (a total of 200 isolates) corresponded to well-characterized species belonging the genera Vibrio and Pseudomonas. Only 51 of the 437 isolates (<11.7% of the total) hybridized to a DNA probe that encodes the upper pathway of naphthalene and phenanthrene degradation in Pseudomonas putida NCIB 9816. A cluster analysis indicated that the species composition of the phenanthrene-degrading community changed significantly from sampling date to sampling date. At one sampling time, 12 6-mm-diameter core subsamples were taken within the 1-m2 site to determine the spatial variability of the degrading communities. An analysis of molecular variance, performed with the phenotypic characteristics, indicated that only 6% of the variation occurred among the 12 subsamples, suggesting that the subsamples were almost identical in composition. We concluded that the communities of phenanthrene-degrading bacteria in the sediments are very diverse, that the community structure undergoes significant change with time but does not vary significantly on a spatial scale of centimeters, and that the predominant genes that encode phenanthrene degradation in the communities are not well-characterized.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts at Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125-3393. Phone: (617) 287-6675. Fax: (617) 287-6650. E-mail: shiaris{at}umbsky.cc.umb.edu.

Appl Environ Microbiol, July 1998, p. 2560-2565, Vol. 64, No. 7
0099-2240/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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