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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, January 2006, p. 212-220, Vol. 72, No. 1
0099-2240/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.72.1.212-220.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Structure and Function of Bacterial Communities Emerging from Different Sources under Identical Conditions

Limnology/Department of Ecology and Evolution, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 20, 75236 Uppsala, Sweden,¹ Département des Sciences Biologiques, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM), Montréal, Québec, Canada²

Received 16 May 2005/ Accepted 5 October 2005

The aim of this study was to compare two major hypotheses concerning the formation of bacterial community composition (BCC) at the local scale, i.e., whether BCC is determined by the prevailing local environmental conditions or by "metacommunity processes." A batch culture experiment where bacteria from eight distinctly different aquatic habitats were regrown under identical conditions was performed to test to what extent similar communities develop under similar selective pressure. Differently composed communities emerged from different inoculum communities, as determined by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of the 16S rRNA gene. There was no indication that similarity increased between communities upon growth under identical conditions compared to that for growth at the ambient sampling sites. This suggests that the history and distribution of taxa within the source communities were stronger regulating factors of BCC than the environmental conditions. Moreover, differently composed communities were different with regard to specific functions, such as enzyme activities, but maintained similar broad-scale functions, such as biomass production and respiration.