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Effects of enhanced UV-B radiation on the diversity and activity of soil microorganism of alpine meadow ecosystem in Qinghai–Tibet Plateau

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Abstract

The effects of enhanced UV-B radiation on abundance, community composition and the total microbial activity of soil bacteria in alpine meadow ecosystem of Qinghai–Tibet Plateau were investigated. Traditional counting and 16S rRNA gene sequencing were used to investigate the culturable bacteria and their composition in soil, meanwhile the total microbial activity was measured by microcalorimetry. The population of soil culturable bacteria was slightly reduced with the enhanced UV-B radiation in both of the two depths, 2.46 × 106 CFU/g in upper layer (0–10 cm), 1.44 × 106 CFU/g in under layer (10–20 cm), comparing with the control (2.94 × 106 CFU/g in upper layer, 1.65 × 106 CFU/g in under layer), although the difference was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). However, the bacteria diversity decreased obviously due to enhanced UV-B, the number of species for upper layer was decreased from 20 to 13, and from 16 to 13 for the lower layer. The distribution of species was also quite different between the two layers. Another obvious decrease induced by enhanced UV-B radiation was in the total soil microbial activities, which was represented by the microbial growth rate constant (k) in this study. The results indicated that the culturable bacteria community composition and the total activity of soil microbes have been considerably changed by the enhanced UV-B radiation.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by National Basic Research Program (2012CB026105), National Natural Science Foundation (31170482, 31370450), PhD Programs Foundation of Ministry of Education (2010021111002, 20110211110021), The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (LZUJBKY-2013-92) in China, and State Key Laboratory of Frozen Soil Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SKLFSE200901). We are grateful to Dr Yantian Ma for his help.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Frozen Soil Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Fujun Niu & Gaosen Zhang

  2. MOE Key Laboratory of Cell Activities and Stress Adaptations, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Junxia He, Xiaomei Liu, Wei Liu, Maoxing Dong, Fasi Wu, Yongjun Liu, Xiaojun Ma, Lizhe An & Huyuan Feng

Authors
  1. Fujun Niu
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  2. Junxia He
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  3. Gaosen Zhang
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  4. Xiaomei Liu
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  5. Wei Liu
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  6. Maoxing Dong
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  9. Xiaojun Ma
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  10. Lizhe An
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  11. Huyuan Feng
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Correspondence to Huyuan Feng.

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Fujun Niu and Junxia He contributed equally to this work.

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Niu, F., He, J., Zhang, G. et al. Effects of enhanced UV-B radiation on the diversity and activity of soil microorganism of alpine meadow ecosystem in Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. Ecotoxicology 23, 1833–1841 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-014-1314-7

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