Background: The bacterial community responses to oil spill events are key elements to predict the fate of hydrocarbon pollution in receiving aquatic environments. In polar systems, cold temperatures and low irradiance levels can limit the effectiveness of contamination removal processes. In this study, the effects of a simulated acute oil spillage on bacterial communities from polar sediments were investigated, by assessing the role of hydrocarbon mixture, incubation time and source bacterial community in selecting oil-degrading bacterial phylotypes.
Methods: The bacterial hydrocarbon degradation was evaluated by gas chromatography. Flow cytometric and fingerprinting profiles were used to assess the bacterial community dynamics over the experimental incubation time.
Results: Direct responses to the simulated oil spill event were found from both Arctic and Antarctic settings, with recurrent bacterial community traits and diversity profiles, especially in crude oil enrichment. Along with the dominance of Pseudomonas spp., members of the well-known hydrocarbon degraders Granulosicoccus spp. and Cycloclasticus spp. were retrieved from both sediments.
Conclusions: Our findings indicated that polar bacterial populations are able to respond to the detrimental effects of simulated hydrocarbon pollution, by developing into a more specialized active oil degrading community.
Keywords: antarctic; arctic; biodegradation; bioremediation; hydrocarbons; microcosms; sediment.