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Differing Escape Responses of the Marine Bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the Presence of Planktonic vs. Surface-Associated Protist Grazers

Protist grazing pressure plays a major role in controlling aquatic bacterial populations, affecting energy flow through the microbial loop and biogeochemical cycles. Predator-escape mechanisms might play a crucial role in energy flow through the microbial loop, but are yet understudied. For example,...

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Autores principales: Villalba, Luis Alberto, Kasada, Minoru, Zoccarato, Luca, Wollrab, Sabine, Grossart, Hans Peter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9456119/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36077481
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms231710082
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author Villalba, Luis Alberto
Kasada, Minoru
Zoccarato, Luca
Wollrab, Sabine
Grossart, Hans Peter
author_facet Villalba, Luis Alberto
Kasada, Minoru
Zoccarato, Luca
Wollrab, Sabine
Grossart, Hans Peter
author_sort Villalba, Luis Alberto
collection PubMed
description Protist grazing pressure plays a major role in controlling aquatic bacterial populations, affecting energy flow through the microbial loop and biogeochemical cycles. Predator-escape mechanisms might play a crucial role in energy flow through the microbial loop, but are yet understudied. For example, some bacteria can use planktonic as well as surface-associated habitats, providing a potential escape mechanism to habitat-specific grazers. We investigated the escape response of the marine bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the presence of either planktonic (nanoflagellate: Cafeteria roenbergensis) or surface-associated (amoeba: Vannella anglica) protist predators, following population dynamics over time. In the presence of V. anglica, M. adhaerens cell density increased in the water, but decreased on solid surfaces, indicating an escape response towards the planktonic habitat. In contrast, the planktonic predator C. roenbergensis induced bacterial escape to the surface habitat. While C. roenbergensis cell numbers dropped substantially after a sharp initial increase, V. anglica exhibited a slow, but constant growth throughout the entire experiment. In the presence of C. roenbergensis, M. adhaerens rapidly formed cell clumps in the water habitat, which likely prevented consumption of the planktonic M. adhaerens by the flagellate, resulting in a strong decline in the predator population. Our results indicate an active escape of M. adhaerens via phenotypic plasticity (i.e., behavioral and morphological changes) against predator ingestion. This study highlights the potentially important role of behavioral escape mechanisms for community composition and energy flow in pelagic environments, especially with globally rising particle loads in aquatic systems through human activities and extreme weather events.
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spelling pubmed-94561192022-09-09 Differing Escape Responses of the Marine Bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the Presence of Planktonic vs. Surface-Associated Protist Grazers Villalba, Luis Alberto Kasada, Minoru Zoccarato, Luca Wollrab, Sabine Grossart, Hans Peter Int J Mol Sci Article Protist grazing pressure plays a major role in controlling aquatic bacterial populations, affecting energy flow through the microbial loop and biogeochemical cycles. Predator-escape mechanisms might play a crucial role in energy flow through the microbial loop, but are yet understudied. For example, some bacteria can use planktonic as well as surface-associated habitats, providing a potential escape mechanism to habitat-specific grazers. We investigated the escape response of the marine bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the presence of either planktonic (nanoflagellate: Cafeteria roenbergensis) or surface-associated (amoeba: Vannella anglica) protist predators, following population dynamics over time. In the presence of V. anglica, M. adhaerens cell density increased in the water, but decreased on solid surfaces, indicating an escape response towards the planktonic habitat. In contrast, the planktonic predator C. roenbergensis induced bacterial escape to the surface habitat. While C. roenbergensis cell numbers dropped substantially after a sharp initial increase, V. anglica exhibited a slow, but constant growth throughout the entire experiment. In the presence of C. roenbergensis, M. adhaerens rapidly formed cell clumps in the water habitat, which likely prevented consumption of the planktonic M. adhaerens by the flagellate, resulting in a strong decline in the predator population. Our results indicate an active escape of M. adhaerens via phenotypic plasticity (i.e., behavioral and morphological changes) against predator ingestion. This study highlights the potentially important role of behavioral escape mechanisms for community composition and energy flow in pelagic environments, especially with globally rising particle loads in aquatic systems through human activities and extreme weather events. MDPI 2022-09-03 /pmc/articles/PMC9456119/ /pubmed/36077481 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms231710082 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Villalba, Luis Alberto
Kasada, Minoru
Zoccarato, Luca
Wollrab, Sabine
Grossart, Hans Peter
Differing Escape Responses of the Marine Bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the Presence of Planktonic vs. Surface-Associated Protist Grazers
title Differing Escape Responses of the Marine Bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the Presence of Planktonic vs. Surface-Associated Protist Grazers
title_full Differing Escape Responses of the Marine Bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the Presence of Planktonic vs. Surface-Associated Protist Grazers
title_fullStr Differing Escape Responses of the Marine Bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the Presence of Planktonic vs. Surface-Associated Protist Grazers
title_full_unstemmed Differing Escape Responses of the Marine Bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the Presence of Planktonic vs. Surface-Associated Protist Grazers
title_short Differing Escape Responses of the Marine Bacterium Marinobacter adhaerens in the Presence of Planktonic vs. Surface-Associated Protist Grazers
title_sort differing escape responses of the marine bacterium marinobacter adhaerens in the presence of planktonic vs. surface-associated protist grazers
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9456119/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36077481
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms231710082
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