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Ann Microbiol (2015) 65:1–13
DOI 10.1007/s13213-014-0829-8
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Composition of supralittoral sediments bacterial communities
in a Mediterranean island

Giovanni Bacci & Ettore Pagoto & Maurizio Passaponti &
Pietro Vannocci & Alberto Ugolini & Alessio Mengoni

Received: 12 September 2013 /Accepted: 3 February 2014 /Published online: 27 February 2014
# Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg and the University of Milan 2014

Abstract Marine coasts represent highly dynamic ecosys- showed profiles of decreasing beta diversity and increasing
tems, with sandy beaches being one of the most heteroge- richness, as well as a differentiation of communities, along the
neous. Despite the key importance of sandy beaches as tran- sea-to-land axis. In particular, members of Firmicutes and
sition ecosystems between sea and land, very few studies on Proteobacteria displayed contrasting profiles of relative abun-
the microbiological composition of beach sediments have dance (to decrease and to increase, respectively) along the sea-
been performed. To provide a first description of microbial to-land axis of the beach. Finally, a search for the presence of
composition of supralittoral sediments, we investigated the genes related to the nitrogen and carbon biogeochemical cycle
composition of bacterial communities of three sandy beaches, (nifH, nosZ, pmoA/amoA) detected the presence of ammonia
at Favignana Island, Italy, using metagenetic approaches monoxygenase sequences (amoA) only, suggesting the pres-
(Terminal-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism, se- ence of bacterial ammonia oxidation to some extent, probably
quencing of 16S rRNA genes by Illumina-Solexa technology, due to members of Nitrospira, but with the lack of nitrogen
functional genes detection, and quantitative Real-Time PCR). fixation and denitrification.
Results showed that the investigated beaches are harboring a
rich bacterial diversity, mainly composed by members of Keywords Supralittoral zone . Sandy beaches . Bacterial
.
.
.
classes Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, communities T-RFLP 16S rRNA gene Metabarcoding
Flavobacteria and Actinobacteria. The metagenetic analysis
Introduction

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
Sandy beaches are world-wide distributed and are constantly
(doi:10.1007/s13213-014-0829-8) contains supplementary material,
which is available to authorized users. subjected to biotic and abiotic disturbances, represented by
: : : natural and artificial bioturbation, seasonal and tidal tempera-
G. Bacci E. Pagoto A. Ugolini A. Mengoni (*)
Department of Biology, University of Florence, Sesto Fiorentino ture fluctuation, erosion by currents, etc. (for a review see
Science Park, via Madonna del Piano 6, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, McLachlan and Brown 2006).
Firenze, Italy In spite of their importance as an ecological transition zone
e-mail: alessio.mengoni@unifi.it
between land and sea, and serious concerns for their ecolog-
G. Bacci ical persistence (Brown and McLachlan 2002; Schlacher et al.
Consiglio per la Ricerca e la Sperimentazione in Agricoltura, Centro 2007), only very recently the microbial ecology of sandy
di Ricerca per lo Studio delle Relazioni tra Pianta e Suolo sediments, particularly concerning the submerged ones, has
(CRA-RPS), Via della Navicella 2/4, 00184 Rome, Italy
stirred attention (Gobet et al. 2012) and a census of web sites
M. Passaponti related to bacteria in sand has recently been published
Department of Chemistry, University of Florence, via della (Wackett 2013). Bacterial and fungal strains have been previ-
Lastruccia 13, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy ously isolated from beach sediments (Teplinskaia 1978;
Figueira and Barata 2007; Jin et al. 2011), but very few
P. Vannocci
Department of Earth Science, University of Florence, via La Pira, 4, investigations have been done aiming to describe the taxo-
50121 Florence, Italy nomic composition of these sandy beaches (Rosano-