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Abstract

Sunken woods are very rich and diverse ecosystems supporting large macrofaunal diversity and representing a source of carbon and energy for any heterotrophic organism able to consume plant material, and those relying on specialized microbial taxa. However, relatively little is known about the microbial communities that degrade sunken woods and produce reduced compounds that serve as energy sources for chemosynthetic lifestyles. The purpose of this study was to explore the bacterial diversity developing on and within sunken woods in a NW Mediterranean submarine canyon and its adjacent slope by using 16S rRNA genes survey. We described communities from Pine wood immerged at 1200 m deep in the Blanes Canyon and its adjacent open slope, as well as from material filling wood boring bivalve burrows. We demonstrate that bacterial communities were very different from each other in each of the three wood ecosystems. These highly diverse wood communities contained all the major bacterial phyla, but Alphaproteobacteria and Deltaproteobacteria were dominant in the open slope and the canyon, respectively. The burrows had more Gamma- and Epsilonproteobacteria. In summary, highly diverse bacterial communities with potentially wide metabolic capabilities colonized wood sunken in the Blanes Canyon and its adjacent open slopes in the Mediterranean Sea.

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