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Eukaryotic microbial communities in hypersaline soils and sediments from the alkaline hypersaline Huama Lake as revealed by 454 pyrosequencing

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Abstract

In hypersaline ecosystems, microbial assemblages are structurally distinctive and play important roles in many microbiological and ecological processes. Here, eukaryotic microorganisms in hypersaline samples were investigated by 454 pyrosequencing of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) gene libraries. In total, 4,645, 1,677, and 5,912 reads were obtained from ITS libraries of waterlogged samples, salt crusts, and saline loess from the alkaline Huama Lake in Shaanxi, China. Analyses of pyrosequencing data revealed that the dominant genera were Dunaliella, Alternaria and Chlamydomonas, which dominated the microbial assemblages in the waterlogged sediments, the salt crusts and the saline loess from the lake banks, respectively. The various infrequent species were not commonly shared by the three types of samples, demonstrating that the eukaryotic microbial compositions of the different environments were distinct. However, the micro-eukaryotic assemblages associated with similar environmental conditions shared some components and were phylogenetically related. The eukaryotic microbial community composition was correlated with the pH value of the site (p = 0.001; r2 = 0.99), but not with the concentration of total nitrogen or the inorganic ions investigated in this study. The results of this study demonstrated that the hypersaline ecosystems hosted surprisingly diverse eukaryotic microbial community.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the handling editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript. This work was financed by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2010CB833801), the National Natural Science Foundation Program of China (No. 31100017), and the Young Science and Technology New Star Program of Shaanxi (No. 2013KJXX-76). WH and WJL would like to extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding this work through the research group project (No. RGP-VPP-205). This research was also supported by the Hundred Talents Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Microbial Diversity in Southwest China, Ministry of Education, Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Bio-resources, Yunnan Institute of Microbiology, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Kaihui Liu, Xiaomei Zhang & Wenjun Li

  2. School of Biological and Engineering, Shaanxi University of Technology, Shaanxi, 723001, China

    Kaihui Liu, Xiaowei Ding, Afeng Lan & Bo Zhang

  3. Key Laboratory of Biogeography and Bioresource in Arid Land, CAS, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ürűmqi, 830011, China

    Hong-Fei Wang & Wenjun Li

  4. Bioproducts Research Chair (BRC), Zoology Department, College of Science, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, Riyadh, 11451, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Wael N. Hozzein & Mohammed A. M. Wadaan

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  1. Kaihui Liu
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Correspondence to Wenjun Li.

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Kaihui Liu and Xiaowei Ding contributed equally to this work.

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Liu, K., Ding, X., Wang, HF. et al. Eukaryotic microbial communities in hypersaline soils and sediments from the alkaline hypersaline Huama Lake as revealed by 454 pyrosequencing. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 105, 871–880 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-014-0141-4

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