The effects of climate, catchment land use and local factors on the abundance and community structure of sediment ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms in Yangtze lakes

Xiaoliang Jiang,Wenzhi Liu,Yujing Wu,Bei Lu,Guihua Liu

doi:10.1186/s13568-017-0479-x

Xiaoliang Jiang, Wenzhi Liu + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1186/s13568-017-0479-x

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Journal: AMB Express	Publication Date: Sep 13, 2017
Citations: 8	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) play important roles in regulating the nitrification process in lake ecosystems. However, the relative effects of climate, catchment land use and local conditions on the sediment ammonia-oxidizing communities in lakes remain unclear. In this study, the diversity and abundance of AOA and AOB communities were investigated in ten Yangtze lakes by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), clone library and quantitative PCR techniques. The results showed that the abundances of both AOA and AOB in bare sediments were considerably but not significantly higher than those in vegetated sediments. Interestingly, AOB communities were more sensitive to changes in local environmental factors and vegetation characteristics than were AOA communities. Amongst climate and land use variables, mean annual precipitation, percentage of agriculture and percentage of vegetation were the key determinants of AOB abundance and diversity. Additionally, total organic carbon and chlorophyll-a concentrations in lake water were significantly related to AOB abundance and diversity. The results of the ordination analysis indicated that 81.2 and 84.3% of the cumulative variance for the species composition of AOA and AOB communities could be explained by the climate, land use and local factors. The climate and local environments played important roles in shaping AOA communities, whereas catchment agriculture and water chlorophyll-a concentration were key influencing factors of AOB communities. Our findings suggest that the composition and structure of sediment ammonia-oxidizing communities in Yangtze lakes are strongly influenced by different spatial scale factors.

Highlights

Nitrification plays an important role as a link between nitrogen (N) inputs from anthropogenic sources and N losses by denitrification and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Mulder et al 1995)
Abundances of ammonia‐oxidizing microorganisms Previous studies indicated that ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) were numerically dominant over ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) in a variety of terrestrial and aquatic
The AOA and AOB abundances in soils or sediments were found to be significantly associated with pH (Sun et al 2014), NH4+-N (Wu et al 2007), NO3−-N (Liu et al 2014), TN (Wang and Gu 2013), total phosphorus (TP) (Gan et al 2016), and total organic carbon (TOC) (Verhamme et al 2011)

Summary

Introduction

Nitrification plays an important role as a link between nitrogen (N) inputs from anthropogenic sources and N losses by denitrification and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Mulder et al 1995). Submerged plants can significantly influence the microbial community structure in sediments by releasing organic carbon (C) and altering the oxygen status (Herrmann et al 2009; Long et al 2016). Anthropogenic disturbances, such as the conversion of vegetation land uses to cropland and urban areas in watersheds, have significant effects on environmental conditions and submerged plants in lakes, which may in turn change the abundance and community structure of ammonia oxidizers in sediments (Liu et al 2015). Climate strongly impacts the community structure of plants and animals, but its effect on ammonia-oxidizing microbial communities remains unclear (Fierer et al 2009; Bru et al 2011)

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