Mentor/s
Kirk Bartholomew
Participation Type
Poster
Abstract
The Feohanagh, Milltown, and Owenmore rivers of the Dingle Peninsula on the southwest coast of Ireland drain conjoined basins of approximately equal size and shape. While these rivers occupy similar spaces of land, the land surrounding the basins serves different purposes and varies substantially in land-use and land-cover (LULC). Our specific aim was to compare the planktonic microbial communities at the outflow region of the rivers for spatial and temporal variation. Five water samples were taken from each of the three rivers at two different timepoints, and Illumina sequencing of the 16S and ITS rRNA regions was conducted to identify bacterial and fungal species, respectively. Statistically significant differences in both community composition and absolute abundance were observed between rivers and also within rivers between timepoints. We are continuing our analyses to identify the significant species driving the observed differences by looking at subgroups representing the top 80% of microbial biomass, the bottom 20% of microbial biomass, and the dominant species represented by more than 100,000 individual genomes/sample. We will also present the results of analyses to correlate observed differences with differences in LULC between the three river basins.
College and Major available
Biology, Coastal & Marine Science
Academic Level
Undergraduate student
Location
Digital Commons & West Campus West Building University Commons
Start Day/Time
4-25-2025 12:00 PM
End Day/Time
4-25-2025 2:00 PM
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Prize Categories
Best Multidisciplinary Research or Collaboration, Most Scholarly Impact or Potential, Most Creative
Analysis of Microbial Community Structure Reveals Significant Differences Between River Basins on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland
Digital Commons & West Campus West Building University Commons
The Feohanagh, Milltown, and Owenmore rivers of the Dingle Peninsula on the southwest coast of Ireland drain conjoined basins of approximately equal size and shape. While these rivers occupy similar spaces of land, the land surrounding the basins serves different purposes and varies substantially in land-use and land-cover (LULC). Our specific aim was to compare the planktonic microbial communities at the outflow region of the rivers for spatial and temporal variation. Five water samples were taken from each of the three rivers at two different timepoints, and Illumina sequencing of the 16S and ITS rRNA regions was conducted to identify bacterial and fungal species, respectively. Statistically significant differences in both community composition and absolute abundance were observed between rivers and also within rivers between timepoints. We are continuing our analyses to identify the significant species driving the observed differences by looking at subgroups representing the top 80% of microbial biomass, the bottom 20% of microbial biomass, and the dominant species represented by more than 100,000 individual genomes/sample. We will also present the results of analyses to correlate observed differences with differences in LULC between the three river basins.
Students' Information
Mary McManus - Coastal and Marine Sciences, 2026
Megan Prettyman - Biology, Honors, 2026