Characteristics of atmospheric fungi in particle growth events along with new particle formation in the central North China Plain
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Earth's atmospheric microorganisms like fungi can influence atmospheric physics, climate, and human health (Elbert et al., 2007). The microbes can participate in long-distance transport and affect huge areas and massive numbers of people (Tang et al., 2018). Fungi are ubiquitous in the atmospheric environment and are one of the most common classes of primary biological aerosol particles (Després et al., 2012). In addition, fungi comprise 23% of the total primary emissions of organic aerosols (Heald and Spracklen, 2009).
The importance of airborne fungi is amplified in the process of cloud formation and development due to their roles as both cloud condensation (CCN) and ice nuclei (IN) (Möhler et al., 2007; Heald and Spracklen, 2009; Iannone et al., 2011). Several dicarboxylic acids have been identified as predominant constituents of organic CCN which can be efficiently transformed by fungi in the boundary layer (Yu, 2000; Ariya et al., 2002; Sun and Ariya, 2006). Laboratory studies have also indicated that certain species of fungi are highly efficient IN, such as Fusarium (Pouleur et al., 1992), Isaria farinose, and Acremonium implicatum (Huffman et al., 2013).
Particle growth is an important process in CCN formation because only atmospheric aerosols capable of growing to sizes of 50 nm or larger can act as CCN (Pierce et al., 2014; Sarangi et al., 2015), although smaller particles may serve under certain special circumstances (Fan et al., 2018). New particle formation (NPF) sometimes occurs during particle growth events and contributes to CCN number concentration significantly (Kuwata et al., 2008; Li et al., 2017). The NPF is defined that its particle formation rates for 3 nm typically vary from 1 to 70 cm−3 s −1 and the growth rate of new nucleated particles has been observed in the range of 1–20 nm h−1 (Yue et al., 2010; Yao et al., 2018; Shen et al., 2019; Lv et al., 2018). Wiedensohler et al. (2009) found that atmospheric aerosols in the growing mode contributed ~80% to the CCN number concentration on a NPF day in the North China Plain. The enhancement by NPF may differ in different regions. For example, NPF increases the CCN number concentration by 2–9 times in urban areas (Kuang et al., 2009) and by 3–10 times in coastal areas (O'Dowd, 2001).
In the particle growth process, although biological particles, such as fungi can accelerate the coalescence by large particles (Möhler et al., 2007), less is known about what specific contribution is made by atmospheric fungi to particle growth, especially on NPF day. Many studies have investigated particle growth from the chemical point of view (Zhang et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2015), but the link between fungi and the particle growth process or NPF is not clear. A detailed investigation about the airborne fungi population and diversity during particle growth or NPF events is thus needed. Airborne fungi have been quantified using the cultivation method (Heid et al., 1996; Lau et al., 2006). However, fungi quantified by this method may not accurately reflect the true fungal species because some fungi cannot be cultured (Lang-Yona et al., 2012). The culture environment in the laboratory and the true atmosphere also differ. Others have reported limitations for culturing airborne fungi (e.g., Amann et al., 1995; Buttner et al., 1997; Hospodsky et al., 2010). DNA sequence-based methods have been proposed to circumvent the cultivation method's limitations in detecting culturable and non-culturable atmospheric fungi (Fröhlich-Nowoisky et al., 2009; Dannemiller et al., 2014). DNA sequence-based methods can make hundreds to thousands of identifications in each sample and are useful for identifying fungal species, concentrations, and diversity (Dannemiller et al., 2014).
In this study, we quantify different atmospheric fungal populations sampled in the central North China Plain by DNA sequence-based methods. Along with aerosol particle number size distribution measurements, the goal of this study is to investigate and characterize atmospheric fungal diversity and explore possible correlations between fungal species and particle growth events on NPF days.
Section snippets
Sample collection
The sampling site is Xingtai located in the central North China Plain (NCP) (Fig. 1), which is located in southern Heibei Province and to the east of the Taihang Mountains. Local industrial and domestic sources are the greatest contributors to air pollution in this study area. Air samples were taken from the roof of a two-story building at the Xingtai National Meteorological Station (37.18°N, 114.37°E) during the Aerosol Atmosphere Boundary-Layer Cloud (A2BC) campaign. Airborne particles
Particle size distributions and particle growth events
Fig. 2 shows the time series of particle number size distributions measured by the SMPS on 3 May and 20 May 2016. The particle number size distribution changes dramatically from day to day. Relatively high concentrations of particles in the 20–200 nm size range were seen in Xingtai during the sampling period. In addition, particle growth events along with NPF are clearly observed (Wang et al., 2018). On the NPF day, the particle number concentration between 15 and 50 nm (N15–50 nm) suddenly
Discussion
In this study, we find that fungal communities have significant differences under PGE-NPF and non-PGE-NPF conditions (Fig. 4), especially at the genus levels of Cladosporium, Capnodiales, Mrakia, Saccharomycetales, and Trichocomaceae. Of these communities, Cladosporium, Capnodiales, and Saccharomycetales all belong to the phylum of Ascomycota. Two IN-active fungi, Isaria farinose and Acremonium implicatum, also belonging to the phylum of Ascomycota have been found (Huffman et al., 2013). This
Conclusions
In this study, we carried out a field experiment from 1 May to 1 June 2016 at Xingtai in the central North China Plain to investigate the characteristics of atmospheric fungi under PGE-NPF conditions. SMPS and CE318-DP sun-sky radiometer instruments were used to analyze PGE-NPF cases. DNA sequence-based methods were also used to obtain in-depth information about atmospheric fungal communities.
The LEfSe analysis shows that fungal communities under PGE-NPF and non-PGE-NPF conditions have
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (2017YFC1501702), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41801329, 91544217, 91837204), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.
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