Comparative Analysis of Bacterial Genera in Seasonally Inundated and Permanently Submerged Sediments of Sultanpur Lake – Ramsar Site, Haryana, India

Abstract

Sultanpur Lake is a shallow waterbody, within Sultanpur National Park, a Ramsar Site in Gurugram, Haryana. This area is home to a wide variety of plants and animals, and it is a crucial eating, resting, and nesting ground for local and migratory birds. The lake is under severe threat from rising pollution and summertime water shortage. The current study was undertaken to characterize the shifts in bacterial genera in the sediments of Sultanpur Lake brought on by intermittent drying and wetting. Next-generation sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicon was used to characterize the bacterial communities in Dry and Wet sediments of this lake and analyze the changes in them. There was a change in the community structure at the phylum as well as the genus level. The top bacterial genera in Wet sediments were Clostridium sensusstricto (23%), Sunxiuqinia (17%), Clostridium_XIVa (12%), Geobacter (12%), Bifidobacterium (6%), Caldilinea (6%), Decholoromonas (6%), Carboxylicivirga (6%), Desulfomonile (6%) and Bacillus (6%) whereas the top ten genera in Dry sediments were Clostridium sensus- stricto (19%), GPl (17%), Parcubacteria genera increate (14%), Lactobacillus (12%), Sunxiuqinia (9%), Alkaliflexus (7%), Methanobacterium (7%), Bacillariophyta (5%), Clostridium_III (5%) and Methanothrix (5%).This compositional shift in the sediment bacterial communities in the Dry plots is towards communities that do not play a major role in the biogeochemical processes.