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Seminar Details

The hitchhiker's guide to bacterial transport: The role of viable dust-borne microbes deposition into marine environments

Date

21/12/2017

Lecturers

Dr. Eyal Rahav - Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, Haifa

Abstract

Aerosols and dust are regularly transported across the oceans and seas supplying nutrients and trace metals to the surface water. In addition, aerosols may also contain a wide array of different airborne microorganisms (heterotrophic bacteria, virus, cyanobacteria and fungi), that can be easily transported for thousands of kilometers away from their place of origin within a few days. The Southeastern Mediterranean (SEMS) and Northern Red (NRS) seas are ideal marine environments to study the role of aerosols and airborne microbes on surface microbial production for multiple reasons. First, the SEMS and NRS are subjected to relatively high aerosol deposition throughout the year. Secondly, they oligotrophic environment with low inorganic nutrients and low autotrophic and heterotrophic activity. Thus, any external input of micro/macronutrients, along with airborne microbes, can have a relatively substantial effect upon interaction with the ambient microbial populations; thereby having a potentially large effect on the system’s production and ecological function. Here, I will discuss who are the dominant airborne bacteria that are being transported to these systems during storm events. Further, I will present some of the ecological roles these microorganisms hold (e.g., carbon and nitrogen fixation) and show some examples of how airborne microbes interact with ambient microbial populations. These results demonstrate that dust-borne microorganisms may play a significant role in the SEMS and NRS ecology and possibly in other oligotrophic marine environments worldwide.

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