Department of Earth System Science

Factors controlling the spatial distribution of bacterial diversity have been intensely studied, whereas less is known about temporal changes. To address this, we tested whether the mechanisms that underlie bacterial temporal β-diversity vary across different scales in three marine microbial communities. While seasonal turnover was detected, at least 73% of the community variation occurred at intra-seasonal temporal scales, suggesting that episodic events are important in structuring marine microbial communities. In addition, turnover at different temporal scales appeared to be driven by different factors. Intra-seasonal turnover was significantly correlated to environmental variables such as phosphate and silicate concentrations, while seasonal and interannual turnover were related to nitrate concentration and temporal distance. We observed a strong link between the magnitude of environmental variation and bacterial β-diversity in different communities. Analogous to spatial biogeography, we found different rates of community changes across temporal scales.