A meta-ecosystem approach to investigating bacterial communities in three distant watersheds
To examine freshwater bacteria across seasons and biomes, three well-studied catchments, White Clay Creek (PA, USA), Neversink River (NY, USA) and Rio Tempisquito (Costa Rica) were sampled to examined the influence of catchment, season, substrate type (rock vs. sediment), stream order, and water chemistry on the composition of streambed microbial communities. Bacterial community composition was assessed with high-throughput 454 pyrosequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA amplicons and environmental parameters.