Vezzulli et al., 2016, set out to question how Vibrio ecology can alter with increased SST's, with a thought how this will effect their virulence (especially with human diseases). Using 50 years of samples from the continuous plankton recorder (CPR), the relative abundance of Vibrio's (including human pathogens) was measured, for comparative purposes the Vibrio index was calculated, and at all 9 sites surveyed the Vibrio index was at its greatest in 2000-2011 than in the last 50 years, this result correlated with the highest SST in around 50 years, and generally longer summers.
These finding give good correlative evidence that climate change is inducing increased Vibrio growth, although this study doesn't provide much causative evidence. Vezzulli does suggest the sharp Vibrio increase could be linked to an increase in Diatoms which was also identified from the CPR, which Vibrio attach themselves to due to the chitin in their cell walls.
Data on the number of Vibrio infections (in humans ) which have been reported during 1973-2011 was analysed finding a postivie relationship between the Vibrio index and the incidence of Vibrio illnesses. With the years showing the highest number of Vibrio illnesses are correlated with the procesence of potentially pathogenic species such as V.cholerae, V.parahaemolyticus and V.vulnificus.
This first of a kind paper offers a novel way to utilize the CPR to provide potentially breakthrough research on the changing Vibrio ecology in response to irreversible environmental change. This paper provides great ecological responses to climate change in such a crucial organisms. Although in terms of fitness the Vibrio's seem to be thriving in the 'new' environmental conditions caused by climate changes, this may have a great negative effect of humans with the potential risk of a bacterial pandemic in the future if there is a continuing rise in water temperatures.
Reviewed paper-
Vezzulli, L., Grande, C., Reid, P., Helauet, P., Ewards, M., holfe, M., … Pruzzo, C. (2016). Climate influence on Vibrio and associated human diseases during the past half-century in the coastal North Atlantic. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(34), E5062–E5071. doi:10.1073/pnas.1609157113 http://www.pnas.org/content/113/34/E5062.abstract
Hi Natasha thanks for the review I really like how this paper uses the continuous plankton recorder as a way to collect data from previous years. I think research can often be limited by accessibly to data and resources. we have only recently really begun to look into microbiology in the ocean which means sometimes it’s hard for us to do current studies because we don't always have the base data from the past to see how things have changed the CPR has been going since the 1930 and so is a good way to obtain data for the past.
ReplyDeleteA second benefit of using the CPR is that a lot of research is restricted due to access to funding if the researchers attempted to carry out their own data collection they may not have been able to achieve the funding for this and so I like how using data from the CPR has allowed them to obtain data which allow them to see how climate change may be effecting Vibrios.
I was just wondering if you had come across any limitations/disadvantages of using the CPR for this study?
Hi Alisha,
DeleteI hope that it's ok if I answer your question. I also read through this paper because we will review it tomorrow during the seminar.
A problem or limitation of the CPR is that it's only used on shipping routes. So we have quite a good database in these regions but for the rest (the biggest part, I think) the knowledge is really limited. I think that it would be good to do CPR samples also on other regions/routes. Maybe by using ships as the "Sun", "Merian" or "Polarstern" on their big expeditions to cover more regions. Problem: they do not use the same routes at each expedition.
Eleni
Thanks for your response Eleni, I guess sometimes you have to work with what you have its a good point that because the CPR only runs along certain shipping routes it limits where data can be collected from, which means that areas that may be especially susceptible to the effects of climate change are currently unable to be specifically focused on, as you mentioned maybe it would be an option to use ships going on big expedition but if they do not use the same routes at each expedition there's no guarantee they would be able to collect enough data for sites to produce results with confident findings
ReplyDeleteHi Guys thanks for your comments and replies, i completely agree with you Eleni, the CPR routes are limited to certain parts of the oceans, but in regards to being able to look at past microbial communities in the oceans it is possibly one of the best tool. It could be considered as an artificial plankton fossil, and doing studies on these records definitely need to be done so with caution.
ReplyDeleteIf you are interested in benefits and limitations of CPR you could ask Colin as he did mention that he has been involved in some work based on these records. It is difficult to find well executed CPR studies in the literature, and i think is solely based on the difficulties encountered when undertaking these studies.
Thanks
Natasha