Core microbial communities of lacustrine microbialites sampled along an alkalinity gradient

Miguel Iniesto , David Moreira , Guillaume Reboul , Philippe Deschamps , Karim Benzerara , Paola Bertolino , Aurélien Saghaï , Rosaluz Tavera , Purificación López-García (1, 2)

1 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
2 ESE - Ecologie Systématique et Evolution

Originality and Significance Statement Microbialites are rocks formed by microbial communities under particular physicochemical conditions. Although they are important as the oldest reliable life traces and for their capacity to sequester CO 2 as biomass and carbonates, the specific drivers influencing carbonatogenesis are not well understood. We compare the prokaryotic and eukaryotic communities associated to microbialites sampled in lakes of increasing alkalinity in the Trans-Mexican volcanic belt. We identify a conserved core microbial community populating microbialites that is more abundant in the most conspicuous microbialites, which occur in lakes with the highest alkalinity. This helps constraining microbialite formation conditions and opens interesting perspectives for the use of subsampled core communities for carbon sequestration experiments.

Domaines: Biodiversité et Ecologie; Bactériologie; Ecosystèmes; Protistologie; Interfaces continentales, environnement

Miguel Iniesto, David Moreira, Guillaume Reboul, Philippe Deschamps, Karim Benzerara, et al.. Core microbial communities of lacustrine microbialites sampled along an alkalinity gradient. Environmental Microbiology, 2021, 23, pp.51-68. ⟨10.1111/1462-2920.15252⟩. ⟨hal-02988545⟩