Microbial Community Resiliency and Role in Sea Level Rise

The interphase (littoral zone) of the Florida Everglades
and surrounding marine environments are
dominated by mangrove forests and mudflats that
transition into freshwater communities. As salinity
levels change, plant cover of the freshwater community
will be adversely affected, but perhaps more
importantly, their microbial symbionts responsible for
their tolerance to high salinity will be impacted as
well. Microbes respond quicker to changing environments
and could provide an early warning of the
loss of resiliency of the Florida coastline ecosystem.
For 10 weeks, soil samples from Biscayne National
Park will be placed in standardized mesocosms and
subject to local conditions like sunlight, tides, plants,
increased sea levels, higher salinities, and variant
inundation. Standard and variant conditions will
be employed on different mesocosms, and weekly
DNA extractions of the various soil samples will
be analyzed via metagenomic analysis, creating a
library of the 16S rRNA community structure over the
10 week period.