title: Bacterial diversity is strongly associated with historical penguin activity in an Antarctic lake sediment profile.
abstract: Current penguin activity in Antarctica affects the geochemistry of sediments and their microbial communities; the effects of historical penguin activity are less well understood. Here, bacterial diversity in ornithogenic sediment was investigated using high-throughput pyrosequencing. The relative abundances of dominant phyla were controlled by the amount of historical penguin guano deposition. Significant positive correlations were found between both the bacterial richness and diversity, and the relative penguin number (p < 0.01); this indicated that historical penguin activity drove the vertical distribution of the bacterial communities. The lowest relative abundances of individual phyla corresponded to lowest number of penguin population at 1,800-2,300 yr BP during a drier and colder period; the opposite was observed during a moister and warmer climate (1,400-1,800 yr BP). This study shows that changes in the climate over millennia affected penguin populations and the outcomes of these changes affect the sediment bacterial community today.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Polar Environment, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei city, Anhui Province 230026, PR China.
authors.forename: Renbin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province 210008, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Institute of Polar Environment, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei city, Anhui Province 230026, PR China.
authors.forename: Dawei
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Institute of Polar Environment, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei city, Anhui Province 230026, PR China.
authors.forename: Can
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province 210008, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province 210008, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Haiyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000864:Antarctic Regions; D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism; D017753:Ecosystem; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000737:chemistry / Q000382:microbiology*; D060106:Lakes; D010802:Phylogeny; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D046429:Spheniscidae / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S