User:Giampiero Zarrilli/sandbox

Habitat
The filamentous sulfur oxidizers Thioploca grows at oxic/anoxic interactions on freshwater, brackish and marine sediments where sulfide of biological and geothermal origin combines with oxygen or nitrate in the overlying water column.

Extensive rugs of Thioploca can be found on the Chilean and Peruvian continental shelf, where it grows on sediments that form the basis of deoxygenated water masses of the Peru-Chile countercurrent ''. Thioploca'' has been found in coastal regions with analogous upwelling regimes, where high organic productivity creates significant oxygen depletion at the bottom waters that covers organic-rich sediments with high sulfate reduction rates. Examples include the coast of Oman, and the Benguela current ecosystem off Namibia. Other reported marine habitats include the monsoon-driven upwelling area of the northwestern Arabian Sea and hydrothermal vent sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Classical localities of the freshwater species are lakes in central and northern Europe  , but they are also present in large lakes in North America, central Russia, and Japan.

Ecological niche
By transporting nitrate intracellularly deep down into the anoxic seafloor, Thioploca appears to effectively eliminate the competition from other sulfide oxidizing bacteria, which are unable to store an electron acceptor for extended periods but need simultaneous access to both electron acceptor and donor in their immediate microenvironment. A similar storage of oxygen in the vacuoles would not be possible since the lipid membranes enclosing cells and vacuoles are permeable to gases. The thioplocas thus move up and down, recharging with nitrate at the surface and oxidizing sulfide at depth, therefore  storing elemental sulfur globules as an energy reserve.

Thioploca and Beggiatoa
Although the thioplocas typically live in sheaths in bundles ranging from a few up to a hundred filaments per sheath, many were found at the sediment surface apparently without a sheath. At the Bay of Concepcion on the Chilean coast, there was a transition between an apparently pure Beggiatoa community inside the bay to a mixed community of both genera at the entrance of the bay to pure Thioploca outside. In the mixed community it was not possible to discriminate beggiatoas from thioplocas by simple microscopy but only by analyzing statistically their diameter distributions. The tapered ends of filaments, characteristic of Thioploca but absent in Beggiatoa, was not a consistent character of the thioplocas.

Future changes in classification of Thioploca and Beggiatoa are likely. The range of strains over which the genus designation Beggiatoa is used is overly broad. More importantly, the differentiation between Thioploca and Beggiatoa is currently based on the formation of a common sheath surrounding filament bundles, a characteristic that might vary in response to environmental conditions. In the absence of pure cultures, it may be impossible to prove or disprove whether any natural population of vacuolated Beggiatoa will form sheath bundles in some specific environment. The clade comprised of three Thioploca strains, two Beggiatoa strains, and a Thiomargarita strain is united by the possession of a large central vacuole. This feature currently appears to be the best morphological candidate to replace sheath formation as a marker in a revised taxonomy of the group Beggiatoa–Thioploca. This marker, in addition to being consistent with 16S rRNA phylogeny, appears to be universally connected to intracellular nitrate accumulation, presumably in the vacuole, for nitrate respiration enabling sustained anaerobic metabolism. A future revision of the genus Thioploca, based on the vacuolated, nitrate-respiring phenotype and corresponding 16S rRNA clade, might include these gliding filaments regardless of whether they occur in sheathed bundles.