Poster: Biology & Disease Mgmt: Bacteriology
16-P
Bacterial Communities in Cultivated and Wild Cranberry Bogs
S. SOBY (1), G. Ebadzad (1), E. Batory (1) (1) Midwestern University, U.S.A.
Transitions in microbial population structure between fallow and cultivated soils may be an important early determinant of disease-suppression of the cultivated soil. Cranberry bogs are an ideal model system for comparing native and cultivated phytobiomes because of the genetic similarity between wild and domesticated cranberry plants, and their location in the same geographic region of southeastern Massachusetts. Soil samples were collected from wild and cultivated cranberry bogs over the course of several growing seasons to determine the composition of phytobiomes in native and cultivated cranberry bogs. Population structures were determined by pyro-sequencing of the V4 region of 16S rRNA genes. Paired-end reads were assembled using PANDAseq, and analyzed using the QIIME software package to call operational taxonomic units and to calculate richness and diversity indices. Bacterial communities in both cultivated and wild bogs had different relative abundances, but were composed of five dominant phyla: Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Bacteriodetes, Verrucomicrobia and Actinobacteria. Principal Components Analysis based on soil bacterial populations among sampled sites indicate that sampling location or soil type are more important than cultivation effects in determining bacterial community structure. These results suggest that a descriptive population structure is associated with each bog type, independent of cultivation status, season, or sampling year.