Spatial variability of winter bacterioplankton community composition in the Gulf of Finland (the Baltic Sea)

The microbial communities in the Baltic Sea are extremely diverse and highly dynamic and undergoing shifts in dominant phylotypes in response to spatial and temporal environmental gradients. We present the first study of wintertime bacterioplankton with a high-throughput sequencing approach. Using barcoded pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene we investigated the bacterial diversity and spatial distribution of winter picoplankton communities in the Gulf of Finland.