Differentiation of Nitrogen and Microbial Community in the Sediments from Lake Erhai, Yunnan–Kweichow Plateau, China

Abstract

As a famous plateau lake and a place rich in biodiversity located at the Hengduan Mountains, there is little research on microbial diversity and community composition in Erhai. In this study, 770,425 16S rRNA sequences had obtained at different depth samples. The abundance‐based coverage estimates (ACE), Chao1, and Shannon indices indicated the high abundance and diversity of Erhai sediment microorganisms. And they were obviously affected by human disturbance. Gammaproteobacteria, Deltaproteobacteria, Bacteroidia, Anaerolineae, Phycisphaerae, and Methanomicrobia were dominant bacteria and existed in almost all samples. The content of total nitrogen (TN) in sediments had a significant positive correlation between Syntrophus, Deltaproteobacteria, Desulfatiglans, Oxyphotobacteria, Clostridiales, Burkholderiaceae, Geobacter, Crenothrix species richness. Desulfobacca, Syntrophus, Deltaproteobacteria, Desulfatiglans, Gammaproteobacteria, Oxyphotobacteria, and Clostridiales were positively correlated with the nitrates in sediments. And the species richness of Desulfatiglans was correlated with NO₂^-. The RDA analysis was shown that dbRDA1 was affected mainly by the depth of lake, while the content of TN, NO₃⁻, NO₂⁻, and NH₄⁺ had the largest effect on dbRDA2. The results indicated the great relations between the diversity and composition of microbial communities and different forms of sediment nitrogen in Erhai lake sediments.

Keywords:

• Erhai lake
• microbial diversity
• microbial N-cycle
• nitrogen
• sediment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the State-level Public Welfare Scientific Research Institutes Basic Scientific Research Business Project of China (No. CKSF2019380/SH and CKSF2017062/SH), and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA23040303).