Environmental stability impacts the differential sensitivity of marine microbiomes to increases in temperature and acidity.

Ambient conditions shape microbiome responses to both short- and long-duration environment changes through processes including physiological acclimation, compositional shifts, and evolution. Thus, we predict that microbial communities inhabiting locations with larger diel, episodic, and annual variability in temperature and pH should be less sensitive to shifts in these climate-change factors. To test this hypothesis, we compared responses of surface ocean microbes from more variable (nearshore) and more constant (offshore) sites to short-term factorial warming (+3 °C) and/or acidification (pH -0.

Microbial communities across nearshore to offshore coastal transects are primarily shaped by distance and temperature.

Recent studies have focused on linking marine microbial communities with environmental factors, yet, relatively little is known about the drivers of microbial community patterns across the complex gradients from the nearshore to open ocean. Here, we examine microbial dynamics in 15 five-station transects beginning at the estuarine Piver's Island Coastal Observatory (PICO) time-series site and continuing 87 km across the continental shelf to the oligotrophic waters of the Sargasso Sea. 16S rRNA gene libraries reveal strong clustering by sampling site with distinct nearshore, continental shelf and offshore oceanic communities.

Incubation and grazing effects on spirotrich ciliate diversity inferred from molecular analyses of microcosm experiments.

We used an experimental approach of analyzing marine microcosms to evaluate the impact of both predation (top-down) and food resources (bottom-up) on spirotrich ciliate communities. To assess the diversity, we used two molecular methods-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and high-throughput sequencing (HTS). We carried out two types of experiments to measure top-down (adult copepods as predators) and bottom-up effects (phytoplankton as food resources) on the spirotrich ciliates.