Parasitic protists are microbes that invade species and derive substances from them; this can be a positive, negative or neutral relationship (Baron 1996). Microbial predators kill other microbes to use for energy and a carbon source (Perez et. al. 2015). They are vital parts of the Antarctic and temperate lake food webs. It is important for microbiologists to understand their role in the ecosystem and how they impact other organisms. Antarctica give microbiologists an indication of the effects of climate change on microbes and how it can affect the temperate environments. Antarctic and temperate lakes have different environments which indicates different ecosystems and microbial differences. Parasitic protists and predators in Antarctica have not been widely studied. The purpose of this project is to learn more about the relationships of microbial predators and parasitic protists (Cleary et al 2016). The samples were collected from the field at various depths at each season. For the Antarctic environment, samples were from Lake Bonney and Fryxell. In the temperate environment, the samples were taken in Ohio, USA from Lake Acton and Burr Oak. The samples were then sequenced with 18S RNA to operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were created to identify the species. From the OTUs, the relative abundance was calculated for the groups of parasitic protists and predators. The total parasitic relative abundance for the Ohio lakes was 1.89 percent and 1.48 percent for the Antarctic lakes. The total predator relative abundance was 6.46 percent for Antarctic lakes and 12.38 percent in the Ohio lakes. This data gives microbiologists insight to the makeup of parasitic protists and predators in the Antarctic lakes and how they differ from temperate lakes. Performing lab studies and investigating the diversity between the lakes are potential next steps to learning more about their relationships.
Author: Lauren Kurtzer
Faculty Advisor: Rachael Morgan-Kiss, Microbiology
You must be logged in to post a comment.