Project: Study of bacterial communities in aquatic systems: a metacommunity approach

2009-01-01 – 2011-12-30

Abstract

There is a vivid debate on the relative importance of local and regional factors in shaping microbial communities, and on whether microbial organisms show a biogeographic signature in their distribution. Previous research has shown that species sorting along environmental gradients is very efficient in bacterial communities over a broad range of dispersal rates. This hypothesis will be validated in two independent field studies over a wide range of spatial scales (South America, Antarctica en sub-Antarctica).