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Effects of enclosure time on the community composition of methanotrophs in the soils of the Inner Mongolia grasslands

  • Soils, Sec 5 • Soil and Landscape Ecology • Research Article
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

Despite the great number of studies about methane uptake and its response to grazing in the Inner Mongolia grasslands, only a few focused on the methanotrophic composition. This study aimed to investigate the methanotrophic community structure and abundance, then to analyze the abiotic driving factors of methanotrophic community structure in different enclosed times in this area.

Materials and methods

In this study we chose typical grasslands in the Xilin River Basin of Inner Mongolia, China to investigate methanotrophic community structure and abundance under different enclosure treatments as follows: 79E (grassland enclosed since 1979), 99E (grassland enclosed since 1999), and G (freely grazed grassland). A clone library was used to reveal the methanotroph community structure, and their relationships with abiotic factors were analyzed by redundancy analysis. Methanotroph abundance was determined by real-time PCR.

Results and discussion

The OTUs of the three treatments mainly belonged to Type I methanotrophs, probably caused by the high pH value. Among all OTUs, only OTU1 belonged to upland soil cluster γ (USC-γ), whose abundance was the largest in all OTUs, indicating the USC-γ cluster was the main one to oxidize CH4 in the Inner Mongolia grasslands. Methanotrophic abundance (represented by the pmoA gene copies per gram of dry weight soil) decreased with the enclosure time as G (4.5 × 107) > 99E (2.8 × 107) > 79E (2.0 × 107), mainly caused by the lower soil moisture content in G. Lower soil moisture content facilitates more CH4 and O2 diffusive into soil thus leading to the proliferation of methanotrophs.

Conclusions

This study found a high abundance of methanotrophs in the soils of the Inner Mongolia grasslands, with the USC-γ cluster having the largest abundance, which may play a key role in oxidizing CH4 in the Inner Mongolia grasslands. Combined with those of previous studies, the results showed an obvious change of methanotrophic community composition with the increase of enclosure time.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the 100 Talents Program of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1000 Talents Program of Sichuan Province, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31570480) and Youth Science and Technology Innovation Team Support Foundation of Sichuan Province (Y5D2071100). The authors give special thanks to Ms. Wan Xiong for her edits and valuable comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, 712100, China

    Tianli Ma, Huai Chen, Qiuan Zhu, Changhui Peng, Liangfeng Liu, Ji Hu, Wei Zhan & Erxiong Zhu

  2. Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration Biodiversity Conservation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Huai Chen

  3. Zoige Peatland and Global Change Research Station, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hongyuan, 624400, China

    Huai Chen, Jianqing Tian & Qiuan Zhu

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yanfen Wang

  5. Institute of Wetland Research, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, 100091, China

    Xiaoming Kang

  6. Environmental Futures Research Institute and Griffith School of Environment, Griffith University, Nathan, 4111, Australia

    Xiaoqi Zhou

  7. Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Jianqing Tian

  8. Institute of Environment Sciences, Department of Biology Science, University of Quebec at Montreal, Montreal, C3H3P8, Canada

    Changhui Peng

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  1. Tianli Ma
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  2. Huai Chen
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  3. Yanfen Wang
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  10. Ji Hu
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  11. Wei Zhan
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Correspondence to Huai Chen.

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Ma, T., Chen, H., Wang, Y. et al. Effects of enclosure time on the community composition of methanotrophs in the soils of the Inner Mongolia grasslands. J Soils Sediments 16, 1022–1031 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-015-1305-1

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