Peat Properties, Dominant Vegetation Type and Microbial Community Structure in a Tropical Peatland
- PDF / 520,597 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 112 Downloads / 236 Views
PEATLANDS
Peat Properties, Dominant Vegetation Type and Microbial Community Structure in a Tropical Peatland N. T. Girkin 1,2 & R. A. Lopes dos Santos 3 & C. H. Vane 3 & N. Ostle 4 & B. L. Turner 5 & S. Sjögersten 2 Received: 1 October 2019 / Accepted: 6 March 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Tropical peatlands are an important carbon store and source of greenhouse gases, but the microbial component, particularly community structure, remains poorly understood. While microbial communities vary between tropical peatland land uses, and with biogeochemical gradients, it is unclear if their structure varies at smaller spatial scales as has been established for a variety of peat properties. We assessed the abundances of PLFAs and GDGTs, two membrane spanning lipid biomarkers in bacteria and fungi, and bacteria and archaea, respectively, to characterise peat microbial communities under two dominant and contrasting plant species, Campnosperma panamensis (a broadleaved evergreen tree), and Raphia taedigera (a canopy palm), in a Panamanian tropical peatland. The plant communities supported similar microbial communities dominated by Gram negative bacteria (38.9–39.8%), with smaller but significant fungal and archaeal communities. The abundance of specific microbial groups, as well as the ratio of caldarchaeol:crenarchaeol, isoGDGT: brGDGTs and fungi:bacteria were linearly related to gravimetric moisture content, redox potential, pH and organic matter content indicating their role in regulating microbial community structure. These results suggest that tropical peatlands can exhibit significant variability in microbial community abundance even at small spatial scales, driven by both peat botanical origin and localised differences in specific peat properties. Keywords PLFA . GDGT . Tropical peat . Microbial community structure . Wetland
Introduction Tropical peatlands are a critical part of the global carbon cycle representing a significant sink carbon containing 15–19% of the global peat carbon stock (Dargie et al. 2017; Page et al. 2011). Tropical wetlands in general are large sources of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), with annual emissions of up to 4540 Tg carbon dioxide (CO2) and 90 Tg methane (CH4)
* N. T. Girkin [email protected] 1
Environment and Agrifood, Cranfield University, Cranfield MK43 0AL, UK
2
School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
3
Centre for Environmental Geochemistry, British Geological Survey, Keyworth NG12 5GG, UK
4
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK
5
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancon, Republic of Panama
(Sjögersten et al. 2014). Plants are key in regulating GHG emissions, as species specific litter inputs define initial peat properties (Cooper et al. 2019; Upton et al. 2018) and rates of decomposition (Hoyos-Santillan et al. 2016b; HoyosSantillan et al. 2015). Plant inputs of oxygen and carbon, in the form of root exudates, have also been identified as critical regulat
Data Loading...
