Abstract
Increasing water discharge has resulted in rising dissolved organic matter (DOM) in draining peatlands. However, how contents and spectral characteristics of DOM changed by increasing terrestrial ants in peatland with water level decreasing, were not well revealed. In the present work, chemical and molecular composition of DOM in ant and nearby soils were characterized using UV–Visible absorption and fluorescence excitation-emission matrix (EEM) combined with parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC). Results indicated that four fluorescence components were identified, of which endogenetic fluorophores accounted for a higher proportion (79.21 ± 0.06%) of the total variability of all four. DOM from ant mound soils had lower aromaticity, humification degree, and smaller molecular size than those from control soil. The influence of microorganisms on the content and structure of DOM was crucial in the ant mound soil, whereas the effect from soil physicochemical properties was apparently more pronounced in the control soil. The study demonstrated that the endogenetic and microbial substances were closely related to the compositional variability of DOM in ant and control soils of peatlands.
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