Distinct Factors Shape Aquatic and Sedimentary Microbial Community Structures in the Lakes of Western China.

Jian Yang,Guojing Zhang,Wen Liu,Geng Wu,Hongchen Jiang

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2016.01782

Abstract

Little is known about the relative importance of spatial and environmental factors to structuring aquatic and sedimentary microbial biogeography in lakes. Here, we investigated the microbial community composition (MCC) of the water (n = 35) and sediment (n = 35) samples from 16 lakes in western China (salinity: freshwater to salt saturation; pairwise geographical distance: 9–2027 km) using high-throughput sequencing and evaluated the relative importance of spatial and environmental factors to microbial (including total, abundant, and rare) distributions. Our results showed that spatial factors were more important than environmental factors in shaping the biogeography of aquatic and sedimentary microbial communities in the studied lakes, and spatial factors on abundant microbial community was stronger than that on the total/rare microbial communities. Moreover, sedimentary rare MCC might be more sensitive to environmental factors than its aquatic counterpart. Such different biogeography responses of total, abundant, and rare communities to environmental and spatial factors could be ascribed to different physiochemical properties between water and sediment. Collectively, this study expands our understanding of factors shaping microbial biogeography of total, abundant, and rare communities between waters and sediments of lakes.

Highlights

Microbes play central roles in regulating elemental cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur within lakes (Newton et al, 2011; Sorokin et al, 2014)
analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) indicated that microbial community composition (MCC) between lake water and sediment samples were significantly (R = 0.403, P < 0.001) distinct
It is not surprising to observe the different relative importance of spatial and environmental factors on shaping microbial biogeography between this and those studies; the other possible reason is that other unmeasured environmental variables might contribute to the different MCCs among the studied lakes

Summary

Introduction

Microbes play central roles in regulating elemental cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur within lakes (Newton et al, 2011; Sorokin et al, 2014). A great number of studies have investigated the relative influence of environmental and spatial factors on Biogeography of Lacustrine Microbes microbial biogeography in lakes (Beisner et al, 2006; Langenheder and Ragnarsson, 2007; Van der Gucht et al, 2007; Pagaling et al, 2009; Schiaffino et al, 2011; Xiong et al, 2012; Logares et al, 2013; Souffreau et al, 2015). Little is known about the difference of the relative importance of environmental and spatial factors to the distributions of aquatic and sedimentary microbial MCCs in lakes at large spatial scales (e.g., tens to thousands of kilometers)

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Discussion

Conclusion