Soil properties predict below-ground community structure, but not nematode microbiome patterns in semi-arid habitats.

Microbial and microeukaryotic communities are extremely abundant and diverse in soil habitats where they play critical roles in ecosystem functioning and services that are essential to soil health. Soil biodiversity is influenced by above-ground (vegetation) and below-ground factors (soil properties), which together create habitat-specific conditions. However, the compound effects of vegetation and soil properties on soil communities are less studied or often focused on one component of the soil biota.

An integrated spatio-temporal view of riverine biodiversity using environmental DNA metabarcoding.

Anthropogenically forced changes in global freshwater biodiversity demand more efficient monitoring approaches. Consequently, environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis is enabling ecosystem-scale biodiversity assessment, yet the appropriate spatio-temporal resolution of robust biodiversity assessment remains ambiguous. Here, using intensive, spatio-temporal eDNA sampling across space (five rivers in Europe and North America, with an upper range of 20-35 km between samples), time (19 timepoints between 2017 and 2018) and environmental conditions (river flow, pH, conductivity, temperature and rainfall), we characterise the resolution at which information on diversity across the animal kingdom can be gathered from rivers using eDNA.

The microbiome of the pelagic tunicate Dolioletta gegenbauri: A potential link between the grazing and microbial food web.

Bloom-forming gelatinous zooplankton occur circumglobally and significantly influence the structure of pelagic marine food webs and biogeochemical cycling through interactions with microbial communities. During bloom conditions especially, gelatinous zooplankton are keystone taxa that help determine the fate of primary production, nutrient remineralization, and carbon export. Using the pelagic tunicate Dolioletta gegenbauri as a model system for gelatinous zooplankton, we carried out a laboratory-based feeding experiment to investigate the potential ecosystem impacts of doliolid gut microbiomes and microbial communities associated with doliolid faecal pellets and the surrounding seawater.

Natural experiments and long-term monitoring are critical to understand and predict marine host-microbe ecology and evolution.

Marine multicellular organisms host a diverse collection of bacteria, archaea, microbial eukaryotes, and viruses that form their microbiome. Such host-associated microbes can significantly influence the host's physiological capacities; however, the identity and functional role(s) of key members of the microbiome ("core microbiome") in most marine hosts coexisting in natural settings remain obscure. Also unclear is how dynamic interactions between hosts and the immense standing pool of microbial genetic variation will affect marine ecosystems' capacity to adjust to environmental changes.

Just keep it simple? Benchmarking the accuracy of taxonomy assignment software in metabarcoding studies.

How do you put a name on an unknown piece of DNA? From microbes to mammals, high-throughput metabarcoding studies provide a more objective view of natural communities, overcoming many of the inherent limitations of traditional field surveys and microscopy-based observations (Deiner et al., 2017). Taxonomy assignment is one of the most critical aspects of any metabarcoding study, yet this important bioinformatics task is routinely overlooked.

Above-below surface interactions mediate effects of seagrass disturbance on meiobenthic diversity, nematode and polychaete trophic structure.

Ecological interactions between aquatic plants and sediment communities can shape the structure and function of natural systems. Currently, we do not fully understand how seagrass habitat degradation impacts the biodiversity of belowground sediment communities. Here, we evaluated indirect effects of disturbance of seagrass meadows on meiobenthic community composition, with a five-month in situ experiment in a tropical seagrass meadow.

Microbial Metazoa Are Microbes Too.

Microbial metazoa inhabit a certain "Goldilocks zone," where conditions are for the continued ignorance of these taxa. These microscopic animal species have body sizes of <1 mm and include diverse groups such as nematodes, tardigrades, kinorhynchs, loriciferans, and platyhelminths. The majority of species are to be considered in single-cell genomics approaches, yet to be wrapped into international genome sequencing initiatives.

Microbial Community Succession and Nutrient Cycling Responses following Perturbations of Experimental Saltwater Aquaria.

Although aquaria are common features of homes and other buildings, little is known about how environmental perturbations (i.e., tank cleaning, water changes, addition of habitat features) impact the diversity and succession of aquarium microbial communities.

Acidity promotes degradation of multi-species environmental DNA in lotic mesocosms.

Accurate quantification of biodiversity is fundamental to understanding ecosystem function and for environmental assessment. Molecular methods using environmental DNA (eDNA) offer a non-invasive, rapid, and cost-effective alternative to traditional biodiversity assessments, which require high levels of expertise. While eDNA analyses are increasingly being utilized, there remains considerable uncertainty regarding the dynamics of multispecies eDNA, especially in variable systems such as rivers.

Sample size effects on the assessment of eukaryotic diversity and community structure in aquatic sediments using high-throughput sequencing.

Understanding how biodiversity changes in time and space is vital to assess the effects of environmental change on benthic ecosystems. Due to the limitations of morphological methods, there has been a rapid expansion in the application of high-throughput sequencing methods to study benthic eukaryotic communities. However, the effect of sample size and small-scale spatial variation on the assessment of benthic eukaryotic diversity is still not well understood.

Nematode-associated microbial taxa do not correlate with host phylogeny, geographic region or feeding morphology in marine sediment habitats.

Studies of host-associated microbes are critical for advancing our understanding of ecology and evolution across diverse taxa and ecosystems. Nematode worms are ubiquitous across most habitats on earth, yet little is known about host-associated microbial assemblages within the phylum. Free-living nematodes are globally abundant and diverse in marine sediments, with species exhibiting distinct buccal cavity (mouth) morphologies that are thought to play an important role in feeding ecology and life history strategies.

Environmental DNA metabarcoding: Transforming how we survey animal and plant communities.

The genomic revolution has fundamentally changed how we survey biodiversity on earth. High-throughput sequencing ("HTS") platforms now enable the rapid sequencing of DNA from diverse kinds of environmental samples (termed "environmental DNA" or "eDNA"). Coupling HTS with our ability to associate sequences from eDNA with a taxonomic name is called "eDNA metabarcoding" and offers a powerful molecular tool capable of noninvasively surveying species richness from many ecosystems.

Let's rise up to unite taxonomy and technology.

What do you think of when you think of taxonomy? An 18th century gentlemen in breeches? Or perhaps botany drawings hung on the walls of a boutique hotel? Such old-fashioned conceptions to the contrary, taxonomy is alive today although constantly struggling for survival and recognition. The scientific community is losing valuable resources as taxonomy experts age and retire, and funding for morphological studies and species descriptions remains stagnant. At the same time, organismal knowledge (morphology, ecology, physiology) has never been more important: genomic studies are becoming more taxon focused, the scientific community is recognizing the limitations of traditional "model" organisms, and taxonomic expertise is desperately needed to fight against global biodiversity declines resulting from human impacts.

Spatial and temporal variation of intertidal nematodes in the northern Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Nematodes are an abundant and diverse interstitial component of sedimentary habitats that have been reported to serve as important bioindicators. Though the 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) disaster occurred 60 km offshore in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) at a depth of 1525 m, oil rose to the surface and washed ashore, subjecting large segments of coastline in the northern GOM to contamination. Previous metabarcoding work shows intertidal nematode communities were negatively affected by the oil spill.

Microbial Community Patterns Associated with Automated Teller Machine Keypads in New York City.

In densely populated urban environments, the distribution of microbes and the drivers of microbial community assemblages are not well understood. In sprawling metropolitan habitats, the "urban microbiome" may represent a mix of human-associated and environmental taxa. Here we carried out a baseline study of automated teller machine (ATM) keypads in New York City (NYC).

Microbiota of the indoor environment: a meta-analysis.

Background: As modern humans, we spend the majority of our time in indoor environments. Consequently, environmental exposure to microorganisms has important implications for human health, and a better understanding of the ecological drivers and processes that impact indoor microbial assemblages will be key for expanding our knowledge of the built environment. In the present investigation, we combined recent studies examining the microbiota of the built environment in order to identify unifying community patterns and the relative importance of indoor environmental factors.

Evolution of the indoor biome.

Few biologists have studied the evolutionary processes at work in indoor environments. Yet indoor environments comprise approximately 0.5% of ice-free land area--an area as large as the subtropical coniferous forest biome.

Deciphering diversity and ecological function from marine metagenomes.

Metagenomic sequencing now represents a common, powerful approach for investigating diversity and functional relationships in marine ecosystems. High-throughput datasets generated from random fragments of environmental DNA can provide a less biased view of organismal abundance (versus PCR-based amplicon sequencing) and enable novel exploration of microbial genomes by recovering genome assemblies from uncultured species, identifying ecological functions, and reconstructing metabolic pathways. This review highlights the current state of knowledge in marine metagenomics, focusing on biological insights gained from recent environmental studies and detailing commonly employed methods for data collection and analysis.

microBEnet: lessons learned from building an interdisciplinary scientific community in the online sphere.

The Microbiology of the Built Environment Network (microBEnet) has served as an experiment in online community building. Here we discuss strategies used to launch a new, interdisciplinary scientific field, and their implications.

PhyloSift: phylogenetic analysis of genomes and metagenomes.

Like all organisms on the planet, environmental microbes are subject to the forces of molecular evolution. Metagenomic sequencing provides a means to access the DNA sequence of uncultured microbes. By combining DNA sequencing of microbial communities with evolutionary modeling and phylogenetic analysis we might obtain new insights into microbiology and also provide a basis for practical tools such as forensic pathogen detection.