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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Extreme Microbiology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1430059
This article is part of the Research Topic Exploring the Diversity, Ecological Significance, and Systematics of Uncultivated Prokaryotic Taxa View all 6 articles

Lithic bacterial communities: ecological aspects focusing on Tintenstrich communities

Provisionally accepted
Francesca Pittino Francesca Pittino 1,2,3*Juliana Oliveira Juliana Oliveira 2,3Sabine Fink Sabine Fink 2*Elisabeth Janssen Elisabeth Janssen 3Christoph Scheidegger Christoph Scheidegger 2
  • 1 Department of Environmental and Earth Sciences, School of Science, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Lombardy, Italy
  • 2 Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland
  • 3 Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Tintenstrich communities (TC) are mainly composed of Cyanobacteria developing on rock substrates and forming physical structures strictly connected to the rock itself. Endolithic and epilithic bacterial communities are important because they contribute to nutrients release within run-off waters flowing on the rock surface. Despite them being ubiquitous, little information about their ecology and main characteristics is available. In this study, we characterized the bacterial communities of rock surfaces of TC in Switzerland through Illumina sequencing and investigated their bacterial community composition on two substrate types (siliceous and carbonate rocks) through multivariate models. Our results show that Cyanobacteria and Proteobacteria are the predominant phyla in this environment. Bacterial alpha diversity was higher on carbonate rocks than on siliceous rock, and beta diversity of siliceous rock varied with changes in rock surface structure. Here we provide novel insights into the bacterial community composition of TC, their differences from other lithic communities, and the effects of the rock substrate and structure.

    Keywords: Cyanobacteria, lithic bacterial communities, extreme environments, Tintenstrich, Lichens

    Received: 09 May 2024; Accepted: 28 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Pittino, Oliveira, Fink, Janssen and Scheidegger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Francesca Pittino, Department of Environmental and Earth Sciences, School of Science, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, I-20126, Lombardy, Italy
    Sabine Fink, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, 8903, Switzerland

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