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Ammonia oxidizers and denitrifiers in response to reciprocal elevation translocation in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau

  • SOILS, SEC 5 • SOIL AND LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY • RESEARCH ARTICLESOILS, SEC 5 • SOIL AND LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY • RESEARCH ARTICLE
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Abstract

Purpose

Global climate change, in particular temperature variation, is likely to alter soil microbial abundance and composition, with consequent impacts on soil biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem functioning. However, responses of belowground nitrogen transformation microorganisms to temperature changes in high-elevation terrestrial ecosystems are not well understood.

Materials and methods

Here, the effects of simulated cooling and warming on the abundance and community composition of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB), as well as the abundance of denitrifiers, were investigated using quantitative polymerase chain reaction and clone library approaches, on the basis of a 2-year reciprocal elevation translocation experiment along an elevation gradient from 3,200 to 3,800 m above sea level on the Tibetan Plateau.

Results and discussion

We found that, compared with the temperature variations caused by elevation translocation, the soil origin exerted a much stronger influence on AOA abundance. There were significant effects of both soil origin and elevation translocation on AOB abundance, which was particularly decreased by elevation-enhanced (simulated cooling) and increased by elevation-decreased (simulated warming) treatments. Altered temperature affected the abundance of nirK rather than nirS and nosZ genes, and the latter two seemed to be associated tightly with the soil origin. Furthermore, the results showed that temperature changes had obvious influences on the community structure and diversity of AOB, but not AOA. More apparent response of AOB to warming than in other studies on grassland and forest ecosystems may be attributed to higher elevation and lower mean annual temperature in this study.

Conclusions

Our findings thus suggest that, in comparison with AOA and denitrifying populations, AOB may respond more sensitively to natural temperature variation caused by elevation translocation in this alpine grassland ecosystem on the Tibetan Plateau.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Qiong Ding, College of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Hainan University for the helpful comments on data analyses. We also appreciate two anonymous referees for their invaluable suggestions and constructive comments. This study was supported by the grants of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 41001149, 31070434, 41230750) and Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (no. XDB03030403). Y.Z. received a fellowship as a visiting scholar from the China Scholarship Council (no. 2011491255).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101, Beijing, China

    Yong Zheng, Wei Yang, Yong-Chan Kim & Liang-Dong Guo

  2. Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia

    Yong Zheng & Hang-Wei Hu

  3. Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 810008, Xining, China

    Ji-Chuang Duan & Cai-Yun Luo

  4. Laboratory of Alpine Ecology and Biodiversity, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101, Beijing, China

    Shi-Ping Wang

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  1. Yong Zheng
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  2. Wei Yang
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  3. Hang-Wei Hu
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Correspondence to Yong Zheng.

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Responsible editor: Yanfen Wang

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Figure S1

Rank of the abundance (sequence numbers) of AOA (A) and AOB (B) OTUs at 97 % level of similarity. The diagram trend is analogous for both AOA and AOB: the top 5 abundant OTUs cover more than 56 % and 70 % of all sequences of AOA and AOB, respectively; and a high number of singletons represent the ‘long tail’ of the diagram. (DOC 41 kb)

Figure S2

Rarefaction curves of the amoA gene sequences of AOA (A) and AOB (B) obtained from four treatments using software aRarefactWin version 1.3. (DOC 86 kb)

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Zheng, Y., Yang, W., Hu, HW. et al. Ammonia oxidizers and denitrifiers in response to reciprocal elevation translocation in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau. J Soils Sediments 14, 1189–1199 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-014-0867-7

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