Abstract
Aims
Microbial activity in the soil of wetlands is responsible for the emission of more methane to the atmosphere than all other natural sources combined. This microbial activity is heavily impacted by plant roots, which influence the microbial community by exuding organic compounds and by leaking oxygen into an otherwise anoxic environment. This study compared the microbial communities of planted and unplanted wetland soil from an Alaskan bog to elucidate how plant growth influences populations and metabolisms of methanogens and methanotrophs.
Methods
A common boreal wetland sedge, Carex aquatilis, was grown in the laboratory and DNA samples were sequenced from the rhizosphere, unplanted bulk soil, and a simulated rhizosphere with oxygen input but no organic carbon.
Results
The abundance of both methanogens and methanotrophs were positively correlated with methane emissions. Among the methanotrophs, both aerobic and anaerobic methane oxidizing microbes were more common in the rhizosphere of mature plants than in unplanted soil, while facultative methanotrophs capable of utilizing either methane or other molecules became relatively less common.
Conclusions
These trends indicate that the roots in this experiment created an environment which favored highly specialized microbial metabolisms over generalist approaches. One aspect of this specialized microbiome is the presence of both aerobic and anaerobic metabolisms, which indicates that oxygen is present but is a limiting resource controlling competition.
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Funding
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research under Award Number DE-SC-0010338. A portion of this research was performed under the Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science (FICUS) program and used resources at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory and Joint Genome Institute, which are DOE Office of Science User Facilities sponsored by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research and operated under Contract Nos. DE-AC02-05CH11231 (JGI) and DE-AC05-76RL01830 (EMSL). This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists, Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. The SCGSR program is administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) for the DOE. ORISE is managed by ORAU under contract number DE-SC0014664. Students were additionally supported by the following fellowships and grants: UW College of Engineering Dean’s Fellowship/Ford Motor Company Fellowship, UW CEE Valle Scholarship, UW Mary Gates Scholarship, and the Carleton College Kolenkow Reitz Fellowship.
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Metagenomic data from the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) is available through the integrated Microbial Genomes & Microbiomes website at https://img.jgi.doe.gov under Study ID Gs0134277 and Project ID Gp0306226. Online Resource 4 contains a summary of the iTag data from JGI.
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Waldo, N.B., Chistoserdova, L., Hu, D. et al. Impacts of The Wetland Sedge Carex aquatilis on Microbial Community and Methane Metabolisms. Plant Soil 471, 491–506 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-021-05239-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-021-05239-7