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Assessing biogeographic survey gaps in bacterial diversity knowledge: A global synthesis of freshwaters

A. Veach,Matthew J. Troia,M. Cregger

Published 2021 in Freshwater Biology

ABSTRACT

Funding information Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Grant/Award Number: DEAC0500OR22725 Abstract 1. Freshwaters account for 0.8% of Earth's surface area, yet support >10% of known plant and animal species making them disproportionately biodiverse. Modern molecular techniques have begun to reveal microbial diversity, but application of these approaches to address global microbial biogeography is relatively unknown in freshwaters. 2. Our aim was to identify gaps in microbial data coverage along climatic and landscape disturbance gradients and among terrestrial biomes and hydrographic regions for all freshwater ecosystems and three freshwater habitat types: lakes and reservoirs (lentic); streams and rivers (lotic); and wetlands. 3. We reviewed literature on microbial diversity in freshwaters surveyed using 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing which identify microbial taxa. We georeferenced survey locations and used a geographic information system to identify and map gaps in survey coverage using opensource data for climate, landscape disturbance, terrestrial biomes, and freshwater ecoregions. 4. We compiled 3,425 georeferenced survey locations reported from 963 studies. Streams were surveyed most frequently (60.8% of survey locations), followed by lakes (33.5%) and wetlands (5.6%). Surveys were concentrated in North America, central and western Europe, and Southeast Asia; 35% of freshwater ecoregions were surveyed at least once across freshwater habitat types, whereas 23%, 23%, and 12% were surveyed at least once for lentic, lotic, and wetland habitat types, respectively. The climatic gap analysis indicated coverage is high for temperate regions but lacking in the tropics and Arctic, particularly for wetland ecosystems. 5. Our assessment revealed high climatic coverage of freshwater microbial diversity knowledge, but expansive ecoregional gaps attributable to biased sampling near research institutions in North America, western Europe, and China. Future surveys should target ecoregions in Africa, South America, Central Asia, Australia, and Antarctica. An essential next step will be to curate and disseminate sequencing efforts to facilitate the study of processes driving global diversity patterns.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2021

  • Venue

    Freshwater Biology

  • Publication date

    2021-06-13

  • Fields of study

    Biology, Geography, Environmental Science

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.1111/FWB.13777
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

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