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Abstract
The influence of salinity and geographical distance on bacterial community composition (BCC) in five freshwater, oligosaline or polysaline lakes located at altitudes higher than 4400 m on the central and southern Tibetan Plateau were investigated using the 16S rRNA gene clone library approach together with multivariate analysis of environmental variables. A total of 10 clone libraries were constructed with two libraries in each lake, one in the epilimnion and the other in the hypolimnion. Geographical distance was not found to impact BCC significantly, but salinity, chl a and lake hydraulic retention time were significant factors influencing the BCC. Bacteria in lakes located on the central and southern Plateau owned the same community composition as that observed from the eastern Tibetan lakes. They were both predominated by Bacteroidetes and Cyanobacteria, had low taxon richness, and similar typical freshwater clusters and distributed characteristics. Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Geomicrobiology Journal to view the supplemental file.
Acknowledgments
This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41171050, 40871045, 41106096), the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2012CB956100), the Chinese Academy of Science (KZCX2-YW-JC106), and the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, MEL Young Scientist Visiting Fellowship (MELRS1022). Professor I.J. Hodgkiss is thanked for polishing the English in this paper.