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Pioneer Microbial Communities of the Fimmvörðuháls Lava Flow, Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

Little is understood regarding the phylogeny and metabolic capabilities of the earliest colonists of volcanic rocks, yet these data are essential for understanding how life becomes established in and interacts with the planetary crust, ultimately contributing to critical zone processes and soil formation. Here, we report the use of molecular and culture-dependent methods to determine the composition of pioneer microbial communities colonising the basaltic Fimmvörðuháls lava flow at Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland, formed in 2010. Our data show that 3 to 5 months post eruption, the lava was colonised by a low-diversity microbial community dominated by Betaproteobacteria, primarily taxa related to non-phototrophic diazotrophs such as Herbaspirillum spp. and chemolithotrophs such as Thiobacillus. Although successfully cultured following enrichment, phototrophs were not abundant members of the Fimmvörðuháls communities, as revealed by molecular analysis, and phototrophy is therefore not likely to be a dominant biogeochemical process in these early successional basalt communities. These results contrast with older Icelandic lava of comparable mineralogy, in which phototrophs comprised a significant fraction of microbial communities, and the non-phototrophic community fractions were dominated by Acidobacteria and Actinobacteria.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council grant (NERC; NE/I007695/1). LiDAR data were collected on NERC Airborne Research and Survey Facility flight UR10/02. The open source GMT (Wessel and Smith, 1991) and GRASS GIS (Neteler et al., 2012) software packages were used in LiDAR processing. We thank Stephen Summers (Dept. of Physical Sciences, Open University, UK) for the assistance with July sampling.

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  1. Laura C. Kelly

    Present address: School of Biology and Conservation Ecology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Oxford Road, Manchester, M1 5GD, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geomicrobiology Research Group, CEPSAR, Open University, Milon Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

    Laura C. Kelly & Charles S. Cockell

  2. Hydrology Division, National Energy Authority, Grensasvegi 9, IS-108, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson

  3. Matís Idt./Food Safety, Environment & Genetics, Vínlandsleid 12, 113, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Viggó Marteinsson

  4. School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3JW, UK

    John Stevenson

  5. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK

    Charles S. Cockell

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Correspondence to Laura C. Kelly.

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Fig. 1

Principal component analysis (PCA) of bacterial communities based 16S rRNA gene clone libraries. PCA was performed on operational taxonomic unit (OTU) abundance data in MOTHUR. (GIF 102 kb)

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Kelly, L.C., Cockell, C.S., Thorsteinsson, T. et al. Pioneer Microbial Communities of the Fimmvörðuháls Lava Flow, Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland. Microb Ecol 68, 504–518 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-014-0432-3

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