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Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Vol. 27, No. 11, pp. 2239–2245, 2008
2008 SETAC
Printed in the USA
0730-7268/08 $12.00 .00
CHANGES IN BACTERIAL COMMUNITY STRUCTURE ASSOCIATED WITH
COASTAL COPPER ENRICHMENT
ANA C. MORÁN,† MARTHA B. HENGST,†‡ RODRIGO DE LA IGLESIA,†‡ SANTIAGO ANDRADE,‡
JUAN A. CORREA,‡ and BERNARDO GONZÁLEZ*†‡
†Departamento de Genética Molecular y Microbiologı́a, Millennium Nucleus on Microbial Ecology and
Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology, ‡Departamento de Ecologı́a, Center for Advanced Studies in Ecology and Biodiversity,
Alameda 340, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile, Casilla 114-D
(Received 7 March 2008; Accepted 21 April 2008)
Abstract—Marine bacterial communities isolated from the water column, sediment, the rock surface, and the green seaweed Ulva
compressa were studied in an intertidal ecosystem. The study area included a coastal zone chronically affected by copper mine
waste disposals. Bacterial community composition was analyzed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP)
of 16S rRNA genes, and multivariate analyses of T-RFLP data sets were used for comparisons. Results showed that diversity and
richness indexes were not able to detect differences among compartments. However, comparisons within the same compartment
clearly showed that copper enrichment was associated with changes in the composition of the bacterial communities and revealed
that the magnitude of the effect depends on the compartment being considered. In this context, communities from sediments appeared
as the most affected by copper enrichment. The present study also demonstrated that intertidal bacterial communities were dominated
by Gammaproteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria and the changes in these communities were mainly due to changes in
their relative abundances.
Keywords—Copper enrichment
Intertidal rocky shores
Marine bacterial communities
INTRODUCTION
Copper is a normal component of terrestrial and