Paula Huber

Instituto Nacional de Limnología (INALI) · Plankton laboratory

Bacterioplankton communities play a crucial role in global biogeochemical processes and are highly sensitive to changes induced by natural and anthropogenic stressors in aquatic ecosystems. We assessed the influence of Land Use Land Cover (LULC), environmental and geographic changes on the bacterioplankton structure in highly connected and impacted...

Bacterioplankton communities play a crucial role in global biogeochemical processes and are highly sensitive to changes induced by natural and anthropogenic stressors in aquatic ecosystems. We assessed the influence of Land Use Land Cover (LULC), environmental and geographic changes on the bacterioplankton structure in highly connected and impacted...

The biogeography of bacterial communities is a key topic in Microbial Ecology. Regarding continental water, most studies are carried out in the northern hemisphere, leaving a gap on microorganism’s diversity patterns on a global scale. South America harbours approximately one third of the world’s total freshwater resources, and is one of these unde...

Background Cyanobacteria are the major prokaryotic primary producers occupying a range of aquatic habitats worldwide that differ in levels of salinity, making them a group of interest to study one of the major unresolved conundrums in aquatic microbiology which is what distinguishes a marine microbe from a freshwater one? We address this question u...

El bacterioplancton es un componente esencial en el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas acuáticos y tiene un profundo impacto en la calidad del agua de los sistemas. Por lo tanto, es importante ampliar el conocimiento sobre su dinámica y diversidad genética. Los objetivos del presente estudio fueron evaluar la estructura y la dinámica del bacteriopla...

RuBisCO (ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase) is one the most abundant enzymes on Earth. Virtually all food webs depend on its activity to supply fixed carbon. In aerobic environments, RuBisCO struggles to distinguish efficiently between CO2 and O2. To compensate, organisms have evolved convergent solutions to concentrate CO2 around the...

Modern agricultural practices heavily rely on the use of agrochemicals. Glyphosate based herbicides are among the most widespread agricultural supplies. The massive application of glyphosate in conventional farming, provides continuous inputs of the herbicide into the environment, unintentionally placing non-target organisms at risk. Shallow lakes...

Protists play a fundamental role in all ecosystems, but we are still far from estimating the total diversity of many lineages, in particular in highly diverse environments, such as freshwater. Here, we survey the protist diversity of the Paraná River using metabarcoding, and we applied an approach that includes sequence similarity and phylogeny to...

The ecological status of Pampean shallow lakes is evidenced by Cyanobacteria Harmful Blooms impairing these nutrient enriched, turbid and polymictic water bodies spread along the Central Plains of Argentina. Under the premise that shallow lakes are sentinels of global climate and eutrophication, a 3-year research in ten lakes located across a clima...

In aquatic systems, an interplay between bottom-up and top-down processes determines the dynamic of picocyanobacteria (Pcy) abundance and community structure. Here, we analyzed a 10-year time series (sampled fortnightly) from a hypereutrophic turbid shallow lake located within the Pampa Region of South America, generating the first long-term record...

The Salado River basin, Buenos Aires, Argentina, contains numerous permanent shallow lakes under anthropic pressure due to different land uses/land covers (LULC) in their catchments. Here, we explored the relation of LULC in the surrounding areas and the physical and chemical variables of six shallow lakes of the aforementioned basin with phytoplan...

Picocyanobacteria (cells <2 µm) can be found either as single-cells (Pcy) or embedded in a mucilaginous sheath as microcolonies or colonies (CPcy). It has been demonstrated that phenotypic plasticity in picocyanobacteria (i.e. the capability of single-cells to aggregate into colonies) can be induced as a response to grazing pressure. The effect of...

Picocyanobacteria (cells <2 µm) can be found either as single-cells (Pcy) or embedded in a mucilaginous sheath as microcolonies or colonies (CPcy). It has been demonstrated that phenotypic plasticity in picocyanobacteria (i.e. the capability of single-cells to aggregate into colonies) can be induced as a response to grazing pressure. The effect of...

The aim of this work was to assess the temporal patterns in the community composition of phytoplankton (PCC) and bacterioplankton (BCC) in two interconnected and hypertrophic Pampean shallow lakes (Argentina). Factors shaping their community dynamics and community temporal covariations were also analysed. We performed 4 years of seasonal samplings...

How diversity is structured has been a central goal of microbial ecology. In freshwater ecosystems, selection has been found to be the main driver shaping bacterial communities. However, its relative importance compared with other processes (dispersal, drift, diversification) may depend on spatial heterogeneity and the dispersal rates within a meta...

Ceratium furcoides is an invasive freshwater dinoflagellate that in the last three decades has expanded its geographic distribution in South America, being recently found in Paraná River floodplain (Argentina). Despite growing concern about the presence and impacts of this invader, information regarding genetic diversity in the southern hemisphere...

Determining which processes take place in the spatial distribution of bacterioplankton metacommunities has been a central goal of microbial ecology. In freshwater ecosystems, selection has been spotted as the main driver shaping bacterial community. However, its relative importance compared with others processes (dispersal, drift, diversification)...

Las modificaciones antrópicas de los ecosistemas acuáticos favorecen la proliferación de microorganismos invasores que pueden ocasionar alteraciones en la biodiversidad y el funcionamiento ecosistémico. Las especies del dinoflagelado del género Ceratium provenientes del hemisferio norte comenzaron a dispersarse en la década del 90 en América del Su...

Picocyanobacteria (cyanobacteria <2µm) can be found either as single-cells (Pcy) or embedded in a mucilaginous sheath as microcolonies or colonies (Cpcy). It has been demonstrated that phenotypic plasticity in picocyanobacteria (i.e. the capability of single-cells to aggregate into colonies) can be induced as a response to predation pressure by fl...

The molecular diversity of the aquatic picocyanobacterial community cannot be accurately described using only the available universal 16S rRNA gene primers that target the whole bacterial and archaeal community. We show that the hypervariable regions V5, V6, and V7 of the 16S rRNA gene are better suited to study the diversity, community structure,...

We analyzed the interplay between neutral and deterministic processes in maintaining contrasting alternative bacterioplankton communities through time in highly productive shallow lakes and we evaluated the relevance of these processes when a regime shift from a clear to a turbid state occurred. We observed that local assembly is ruled primary dete...

Dominant primary producer in macrophyte- or phytoplankton-dominated shallow lakes might imply differences in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) composition. We compared chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM), plankton respiration (R), and bacterial (BP) and primary production (PP), in two contrasting shallow lakes. We hypothesized that DOC from t...

We investigated nine Pampean shallow lakes (Argentina) across a moisture gradient (mean annual precipitation 1,000–500 mm), under the frame-work of a network project of lake monitoring whose main objective was to analyse the responses of ecosystems to different stressors associated with human activities. We postulate that species bloom in different...

The province of Córdoba, located in the central region of Argentina, is subdivided into two areas: a hilly area to the west and a plain to the east. The fluvio-lacustrine systems developed in these areas form both exorheic and endorheic basins. The phytoplankton dynamics of these basins is determined mainly by their physicochemical and hydrological...