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Methanotrophic community structure and activity under warming and grazing of alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Knowledge about methanotrophs and their activities is important to understand the microbial mediation of the greenhouse gas CH4 under climate change and human activities in terrestrial ecosystems. The effects of simulated warming and sheep grazing on methanotrophic abundance, community composition, and activity were studied in an alpine meadow soil on the Tibetan Plateau. There was high abundance of methanotrophs (1.2–3.4 × 108 pmoA gene copies per gram of dry weight soil) assessed by real-time PCR, and warming significantly increased the abundance regardless of grazing. A total of 64 methanotrophic operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were obtained from 1,439 clone sequences, of these OTUs; 63 OTUs (98.4%) belonged to type I methanotrophs, and only one OTU was Methylocystis of type II methanotrophs. The methanotroph community composition and diversity were not apparently affected by the treatments. Warming and grazing significantly enhanced the potential CH4 oxidation activity. There were significantly negative correlations between methanotrophic abundance and soil moisture and between methanotrophic abundance and NH4–N content. The study suggests that type I methanotrophs, as the dominance, may play a key role in CH4 oxidation, and the alpine meadow has great potential to consume more CH4 under future warmer and grazing conditions on the Tibetan Plateau.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the grant of the Knowledge Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (no. KSCX2-YW-Z-1020), the Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 41001149), and the National Basic Research Program (2010CB833502).

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Yong Zheng, Wei Yang, Xiang Sun & Liang-Dong Guo

  2. Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, People’s Republic of China

    Shi-Ping Wang

  3. Graduate University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

    Wei Yang & Yi-Chao Rui

  4. Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, 810008, People’s Republic of China

    Cai-Yun Luo

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  1. Yong Zheng
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  3. Xiang Sun
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  4. Shi-Ping Wang
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Zheng, Y., Yang, W., Sun, X. et al. Methanotrophic community structure and activity under warming and grazing of alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 93, 2193–2203 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3535-5

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