TY  - JOUR
A1  - Nwosu, Ebuka Canisius
A1  - Roeser, Patricia Angelika
A1  - Yang, Sizhong
A1  - Ganzert, Lars
A1  - Dellwig, Olaf
A1  - Pinkerneil, Sylvia
A1  - Brauer, Achim
A1  - Dittmann, Elke
A1  - Wagner, Dirk
A1  - Liebner, Susanne
T1  - From water into sediment-tracing freshwater cyanobacteria via DNA analyses
JF  - Microorganisms : open access journal
N2  - Sedimentary ancient DNA-based studies have been used to probe centuries of climate and environmental changes and how they affected cyanobacterial assemblages in temperate lakes. Due to cyanobacteria containing potential bloom-forming and toxin-producing taxa, their approximate reconstruction from sediments is crucial, especially in lakes lacking long-term monitoring data. To extend the resolution of sediment record interpretation, we used high-throughput sequencing, amplicon sequence variant (ASV) analysis, and quantitative PCR to compare pelagic cyanobacterial composition to that in sediment traps (collected monthly) and surface sediments in Lake Tiefer See. Cyanobacterial composition, species richness, and evenness was not significantly different among the pelagic depths, sediment traps and surface sediments (p > 0.05), indicating that the cyanobacteria in the sediments reflected the cyanobacterial assemblage in the water column. However, total cyanobacterial abundances (qPCR) decreased from the metalimnion down the water column. The aggregate-forming (Aphanizomenon) and colony-forming taxa (Snowella) showed pronounced sedimentation. In contrast, Planktothrix was only very poorly represented in sediment traps (meta- and hypolimnion) and surface sediments, despite its highest relative abundance at the thermocline (10 m water depth) during periods of lake stratification (May-October). We conclude that this skewed representation in taxonomic abundances reflects taphonomic processes, which should be considered in future DNA-based paleolimnological investigations.
KW  - Aphanizomenon
KW  - Planktothrix
KW  - Snowella
KW  - cyanobacteria sedimentation
KW  - lake monitoring
KW  - sedimentary ancient DNA
KW  - sediment traps
KW  - environmental reconstruction
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms9081778
SN  - 2076-2607
VL  - 9
IS  - 8
PB  - MDPI
CY  - Basel
ER  -