Microbial Community Alterations along East Coast Wetlands

Fiddler crabs, Minuca pugnax, are bioturbators commonly found in coastal habitats, who can circulate nutrients in sediments on depths up to 15 cm. Throughout the past 2 decades M. pugnax have migrated north as a result of ocean warming. It is unknown how the microbial communities changed as a result of this range expansion along the East Coast of the United States. Soil samples were collected in 4 coastal Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites along the east coast: a mangrove in the Florida Coastal Everglades (FCE) and 3 salt marshes (Plum Island Ecosystem (PIE), Rowley, MA; Virginia Coast Reserve (VCR), VA, and Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long Term Ecological Research site (GCE), Sapelo Island, GA. At each site, we identified 8-10 plots containing fiddler crab burrows at different densities. We collected 5 mm deep sediment cores in triplicate per area from regions with burrows (up to 2.5 cm in depth of the burrow), adjacent to the burrow, and 10 cm away from the burrow.We extracted microbial DNA from soil samples and sequenced the 16S rRNA to assess microbial community shifts. With range expansion, we hypothesize that microbial communities within burrows will be more similar across latitude than microbial communities in nearby reference sediments due to the homogenizing effect of the crabs. 

Primary Presenter: Alexandra Figueroa, University of Massachusetts Boston (alexandrafigueroa8@gmail.com)

Authors:

Jennifer Bowen, Northeastern University  (je.bowen@northeastern.edu)