Abstract
Seagrass meadows are vital ecosystems with high productivity and biodiversity and often in the oligotrophic area. Nitrogen usually limits productivity in this ecosystem as the main nutrient factor. Biological nitrogen fixation by diazotrophs in the rhizosphere sediment can introduce "new" nitrogen into the ecosystem. Previous studies revealed that most sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) can also fix nitrogen like the nitrogen-fixing bacteria (NFB). Moreover, both sulfate reduction and nitrogen fixation were affected by the organic pollutant. However, rare information is available regarding the NFB and SRB community composition and their temporal response to the pollutant. The quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and polymerase chain reaction denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis have been used to analyze NFB and SRB communities' shifts under different PAHs concentrations. They both experienced a dramatic shift under PAHs stress but exhibited different patterns. SRB could use the low and high concentration PAHs at the early stage of the incubation, while only the low concentration of PAHs could stimulate the growth of NFB through the whole incubation period. The predominant species of NFB communities were Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, and Deltaproteobacteria; while for SRB communities were class Epsilonproteobacteria. Redundancy analysis indicated the significant environmental factors for the two communities were both ammonium and pH (P < 0.05). There existed nifH sequences related to known nitrogen fixing SRB Desulfatibacillum alkenivorans, which confirmed that microbial N2 fixation and sulfate reduction were coupled in the seagrass ecosystem by molecular technique. Our investigation provides new insight into the NFB and SRB community in the seagrass meadow.
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Acknowledgements
The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41676163, 41406191), Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA13020300), Key Special Project for Introduced Talents Team of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou) (GML2019ZD0402), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC0506301, 2018YFC1406505, 2018FY100105), Guangdong Province Public Welfare Research and Capacity Building Project (2015A020216016), Pearl River S&T Nova Program of Guangzhou (201806010017), and Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province, China (2020B1212060058). We thank all the members of the tropical Marine Biological Research station and Xisha/Nansha Ocean Observation and Research Station in Hainan for their work in the field sample collection.
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Ling, J., Zhou, W., Yang, Q. et al. Effect of PAHs on nitrogen-fixing and sulfate-reducing microbial communities in seagrass Enhalus acoroides sediment. Arch Microbiol 203, 3443–3456 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-021-02321-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-021-02321-7