A Deeper Look into the Biodiversity of the Extremely Acidic Copahue volcano-Río Agrio System in Neuquén, Argentina

Microorganisms

Germán Lopez Bedogni¹  FranciscoL. Massello¹  EdgardoRubén Donati¹  MaríaSofía Urbieta¹  Alejandra Giaveno² 

[1] CINDEFI (CONICET-CCT LA PLATA, UNLP), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Calles 47 y 115, 1900 La Plata, Argentina;PROBIEN-CONICET-UNCo, Departamento de Química, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Neuquén 8300, Argentina;

关键词: acidic river;    16s rrna biodiversity;    extreme environment;    acidophiles;    copahue-caviahue;   

DOI  :  10.3390/microorganisms8010058

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The Copahue volcano-Río Agrio system, on Patagonia Argentina, comprises the naturally acidic river Río Agrio, that runs from a few meters down the Copahue volcano crater to more than 40 km maintaining low pH waters, and the acidic lagoon that sporadically forms on the crater of the volcano, which is studied for the first time in this work. We used next-generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene of the entire prokaryotic community to study the biodiversity of this poorly explored extreme environment. The correlation of the operational taxonomic units (OTUs)s presence with physicochemical variables showed that the system contains three distinct environments: the crater lagoon, the Upper Río Agrio, and the Salto del Agrio waterfall, a point located approximately 12 km down the origin of the river, after it emerges from the Caviahue lake. The prokaryotic community of the Copahue Volcano-Río Agrio system is mainly formed by acidic bacteria and archaea, such as Acidithiobacillus, Ferroplasma, and Leptospirillum, which have been isolated from similar environments around the world. These results support the idea of a ubiquitous acidic biodiversity; however, this highly interesting extreme environment also has apparently autochthonous species such as Sulfuriferula, Acidianus copahuensis, and strains of Acidibacillus and Alicyclobacillus.

【 授权许可】

Unknown