Chiaki Motegi

Effects of soot deposition on particle dynamics and microbial processes in marine surface waters

Large amounts of soot are continuously deposited on the global ocean. Even though significant concentrations of soot particles are found in marine waters, the effects of these aerosols on ocean ecosystems are currently unknown. Using a combination of in situ and experimental data, and results from an atmospheric transport model, we show that the deposition of soot particles from an oil-fired power plant impacted biogeochemical properties and the functioning of the pelagic ecosystem in tropical oligotrophic oceanic waters off New Caledonia. Deposition was followed by a major increase in the volume concentration of suspended particles, a change in the particle size spectra that resulted from a stimulation of aggregation processes, a 5% decrease in the concentration of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), a decreases of 33 and 23% in viral and free bacterial abundances, respectively, and a factor ~2 increase in the activity of particle-attached bacteria suggesting that soot introduced in the system favored bacterial growth. These patterns were confirmed by experiments with natural seawater conducted with both soot aerosols collected in the study area and standard diesel soot. The data suggest a strong impact of soot deposition on ocean surface particles, DOC, and microbial processes, at least near emission hot spots.

Localized accumulation and a shelf‐basin gradient of particles in the Chukchi Sea and Canada Basin, western Arctic

Transparent exopolymer particles (TEP), particulate organic carbon (POC), and particles (size range: 5.2–119 μm) as determined by laser in situ scattering and transmissometry (LISST) were measured in the water column from the Chukchi Sea to the Canada Basin in the western Arctic Ocean, during the late summer of 2012. In general, the percentages of TEP-carbon to POC were high (the mean values for the shelf and slope-basin regions were 135.4 ± 58.0% (± standard deviation, n = 36) and 187.6 ± 73.3% (n = 58), respectively), relative to the corresponding values reported for other oceanic regions, suggesting that TEP play an important role in regulating particle dynamics. A hotspot (extremely high concentration) of particles, accompanied by high prokaryote abundance and production, was observed near the seafloor (depth 50 m) of the shelf region. Localized accumulation of particles was also found in the thin layer near the pycnocline (depth 10–30 m) and on the slope. Over a broader spatial scale, particle concentration gradients were identified from the shelf to the basin in the upper water column (<50 m). The particle-size distribution analysis indicated that relatively small particles were dominant in the shelf region compared to the slope-basin region. These results suggest that particles containing large amounts of TEP are produced in the shelf region and are potentially delivered to the slope-basin region along the pycnocline, which might support productivity and material cycles in the nutrient-depleted basin region of the western Arctic Ocean.

Coupled Response of Bacterial Production to a Wind-Induced Fall Phytoplankton Bloom and Sediment Resuspension in the Chukchi Sea Shelf, Western Arctic Ocean

Heterotrophic bacterial abundance and production, dissolved free amino acid (DFAA) and dissolved combined amino acid (DCAA) concentrations, and other microbial parameters were determined for seawater samples collected at a fixed station (maximum water depth, 56 m) deployed on the Chukchi Sea Shelf, in the western Arctic Ocean, during a 16-day period in September 2013. During the investigation period, the sampling station experienced strong winds and a subsequent phytoplankton bloom, which was thought to be triggered by enhanced vertical mixing and upward nutrient fluxes. In this study, we investigated whether bacterial and dissolved amino acid parameters changed in response to these physical and biogeochemical events. Bacterial abundance and production in the upper layer increased with increasing chlorophyll a concentration, despite a concomitant decrease in seawater temperature from 3.2°C to 1.5°C. The percentage of bacteria with high nucleic acid content during the bloom was significantly higher than that during the prebloom period. The ratio of the depth-integrated (0–20 m) bacterial production to primary production differed little between the prebloom and bloom period, with an overall average value of 0.14 ± 0.03 (± standard deviation, n = 8). DFAA and DCAA concentrations varied over a limited range throughout the investigation, indicating that the supply and consumption of labile dissolved amino acids were balanced. These results indicate that there was a tightly coupled, large flow of organic carbon from primary producers to heterotrophic bacteria during the fall bloom. Our data also revealed that bacterial production and abundance were high in the bottom nepheloid (low transmittance) layer during strong wind events, which was associated with sediment resuspension due to turbulence near the seafloor. The impacts of fall wind events, which are predicted to become more prominent with the extension of the ice-free period, on bacterial processes and the dynamics of organic matter in the Chukchi Sea Shelf could have far-reaching influences on biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem dynamics in broader regions of the Arctic Ocean.

Interactive effects of viral and bacterial production on marine bacterial diversity.

A general model of species diversity predicts that the latter is maximized when productivity and disturbance are balanced. Based on this model, we hypothesized that the response of bacterial diversity to the ratio of viral to bacterial production (VP/BP) would be dome-shaped. In order to test this hypothesis, we obtained data on changes in bacterial communities (determined by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism of 16S rRNA gene) along a wide VP/BP gradient (more than two orders of magnitude), using seawater incubations from NW Mediterranean surface waters, i.e., control and treatments with additions of phosphate, viruses, or both. In December, one dominant Operational Taxonomic Unit accounted for the major fraction of total amplified DNA in the phosphate addition treatment (75±20%, ± S.D.), but its contribution was low in the phosphate and virus addition treatment (23±19%), indicating that viruses prevented the prevalence of taxa that were competitively superior in phosphate-replete conditions. In contrast, in February, the single taxon predominance in the community was held in the phosphate addition treatment even with addition of viruses. We observed statistically robust dome-shaped response patterns of bacterial diversity to VP/BP, with significantly high bacterial diversity at intermediate VP/BP. This was consistent with our model-based hypothesis, indicating that bacterial production and viral-induced mortality interactively affect bacterial diversity in seawater.

Colonization and release processes of viruses and prokaryotes on artificial marine macroaggregates

Marine organic aggregates are sites of high of viral accumulation; however, still little is known about their colonization processes and interactions with their local bacterial hosts. By taking advantage of a novel approach (paramagnetic functionalized microsphere method) to create and incubate artificial macroaggregates, we examined the small-scale movements of viruses and bacteria between such marine snow particles and the surrounding water. The examination of the codynamics of both free-living and attached viral and bacterial abundance, over 12 hours of incubation in virus-free water, suggests that aggregates are rather comparable to viral factories than to viral traps where a significant part of the virions production might be locally diverted to the water column. Also, the near-zero proportion of lysogenized cells measured in aggregates after mitomycin-C induction seems to indicate that lysogeny is not a prominent viral reproduction pathway in organic aggregates where most viruses might rather be virulent. Finally, we hypothesize that, contrary to bacteria, which can use both strong attachment and detachment from aggregates (two-way motion of bacteria), the adsorption of planktonic viruses appears to be numerically negligible compared to their massive export from the aggregates into the water column (one-way motion of viruses).