Closely related protist strains have different grazing impacts on natural bacterial communities

Glucksman, Edvard; Bell, Thomas; Griffiths, Robert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3341-4547; Bass, David. 2010 Closely related protist strains have different grazing impacts on natural bacterial communities. Environmental Microbiology, 12 (12). 3105-3113. 10.1111/j.1462-2920.2010.02283.x

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Official URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1462-...

Abstract/Summary

Heterotrophic protists are abundant in most environments and exert a strong top-down control on bacterial communities. However, little is known about how selective most protists are with respect to their bacterial prey. We conducted feeding trials using cercomonad and glissomonad Cercozoa by assaying them on a standardized, diverse bacterial community washed from beech leaf litter. For each of the nine protist strains assayed here, we measured several phenotypic traits (cell volume, speed, plasticity and protist cell density) that we anticipated would be important for their feeding ecology. We also estimated the genetic relatedness of the strains based on the 18S rRNA gene. We found that the nine protist strains had significantly different impacts on both the abundance and the composition of the bacterial communities. Both the phylogenetic distance between protist strains and differences in protist strain traits were important in explaining variation in the bacterial communities. Of the morphological traits that we investigated, protist cell volume and morphological plasticity (the extent to which cells showed amoeboid cell shape flexibility) were most important in determining bacterial community composition. The results demonstrate that closely related and morphologically similar protist species can have different impacts on their prey base.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1111/j.1462-2920.2010.02283.x
Programmes:	CEH Topics & Objectives 2009 - 2012 > Biodiversity > BD Topic 3 - Managing Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in a Changing Environment > BD - 3.1 - Develop methods to quantify the link between biodiversity ..
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Hails
ISSN:	1462-2912
Date made live:	07 Mar 2011 15:22 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/13632

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

10.1111/j.1462-2920.2010.02283.x

Programmes:

CEH Topics & Objectives 2009 - 2012 > Biodiversity > BD Topic 3 - Managing Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in a Changing Environment > BD - 3.1 - Develop methods to quantify the link between biodiversity ..

UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:

Hails

ISSN:

1462-2912

Date made live:

07 Mar 2011 15:22 +0 (UTC)