What this entity is
Canonical name: Sphingomonas. 1
Known aliases: No aliases were reported for this entity in the source document. 1
Stable external identifier: No stable external identifier was reported for this genus in the source document. 1
Sphingomonas is an environmental bacterial genus included in the Oak Ridge co-occurrence analysis and in the pH-associated Cluster A. 1
Environmental and plant-associated ecology
Sphingomonas belonged to Cluster A, which also comprised Brevundimonas, Caulobacter, Variovorax, and Sphingobium. 1 Cluster A was one of two anti-correlated genus clusters identified across 587 Oak Ridge 100-Well-Survey communities. 1 The analysis identified 47 significant genus-pair associations with absolute Spearman correlation greater than 0.2 and p < 0.01 across those 587 communities. 1
Across 464,000 globally sampled 16S environmental profiles, Cluster A had an average pH of 6.78 and an average temperature of 15.7°C. 1 Cluster A differed from the opposing Cluster B by 1.35 pH units and 6.9°C, with Cluster B averaging pH 5.43 and 22.6°C. 1 These results support an association between Sphingomonas membership in Cluster A and the comparatively less acidic, cooler environmental niche identified in the analysis; the co-occurrence evidence is correlational rather than causal. 1
The plant-microbiome analysis refines this environmental picture by identifying Sphingomonas as one of the genera dominating the phyllosphere, the above-ground plant compartment, rather than limiting its ecological association to the Oak Ridge pH–temperature pattern. 2 This plant-compartment result is a genus-level distributional association and does not establish that all Sphingomonas lineages share the same host or functional phenotype. 2
Oak Ridge field ecology
The Oak Ridge field study supports the genus-level environmental association above: Sphingomonas was detected at 93% of 108 groundwater sites characterized by 16S amplicon sequencing. 3
It also refines the earlier ecological picture by showing a significant negative association with uranium concentration (Spearman rho=-0.382, p=4.5e-5, FDR q=2.5e-4), rather than a uniformly favorable response to metal contamination. 3
Sphingomonas was one of five genera whose uranium associations remained significant after Benjamini–Hochberg false-discovery-rate correction, while the aggregate laboratory metal-tolerance score across genera was only suggestively related to field abundance. 3
The field result is genus-level and correlational, so it does not establish that uranium directly inhibits Sphingomonas or identify which strains account for the association. 3
Lignin-community enrichment
The lignin enrichment experiment refines the broader environmental association by showing that Sphingomonas was higher in the base community at 1.74% than in enriched conditions; this genus therefore did not increase under the tested lignin treatments. 4
This result is conditional on the enrichment design and does not establish a mechanism for the observed decrease. 4
Related pages
- Genotype × Condition to Phenotype Prediction from ENIGMA Growth Curves — source summary for the integrated ENIGMA genotype-to-phenotype study. 1
- Lab Fitness Predicts Field Ecology at Oak Ridge — source summary for the laboratory-fitness and Oak Ridge field-ecology comparison. 3
- Lignin Enrichment and Ecological Memory in Microbial Communities — source summary for bacterial and fungal community restructuring under lignin enrichment. 4
- Plant Microbiome Ecotypes — Compartment-Specific Functional Guilds and Their Genetic Architecture — source summary for plant-compartment functional guilds and genomic architecture. 2
- environment-embedding-geography — cross-environment embedding of local Oak Ridge co-occurrence and global environmental data. 1
- ecotype-environment-gene-content — relationship between environmental distribution, ecological clustering, and gene content. 1
- oak-ridge-field-research-center — place associated with the Oak Ridge environmental analysis. 1