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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2009, p. 7189-7195, Vol. 75, No. 22
0099-2240/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01284-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Bacterial Community Composition of Stream Biofilms in Spatially Variable-Flow Environments{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Katharina Besemer,1 Gabriel Singer,1 Iris Hödl,1 and Tom J. Battin1,2*

Department of Freshwater Ecology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, A-1090 Vienna, Austria,1 WasserCluster Lunz, Dr. Carl Kupelwieser Promenade 5, A-3293 Lunz am See, Austria2

Received 3 June 2009/ Accepted 10 September 2009

Streams are highly heterogeneous ecosystems, in terms of both geomorphology and hydrodynamics. While flow is recognized to shape the physical architecture of benthic biofilms, we do not yet understand what drives community assembly and biodiversity of benthic biofilms in the heterogeneous flow landscapes of streams. Within a metacommunity ecology framework, we experimented with streambed landscapes constructed from bedforms in large-scale flumes to illuminate the role of spatial flow heterogeneity in biofilm community composition and biodiversity in streams. Our results show that the spatial variation of hydrodynamics explained a remarkable percentage (up to 47%) of the variation in community composition along bedforms. This suggests species sorting as a model of metacommunity dynamics in stream biofilms, though natural biofilm communities will clearly not conform to a single model offered by metacommunity ecology. The spatial variation induced by the hydrodynamics along the bedforms resulted in a gradient of bacterial beta diversity, measured by a range of diversity and similarity indices, that increased with bedform height and hence with spatial flow heterogeneity at the flume level. Our results underscore the necessity to maintain small-scale physical heterogeneity for community composition and biodiversity of biofilms in stream ecosystems.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Freshwater Ecology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. Phone: 43-1-4277-54350. Fax: 43-1-4277-9542. E-mail: tom.battin{at}univie.ac.at

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 18 September 2009.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://aem.asm.org/.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2009, p. 7189-7195, Vol. 75, No. 22
0099-2240/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01284-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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