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A Hump-Backed Trend in Bacterial Diversity with Elevation on Mount Fuji, Japan

  • Soil Microbiology
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Abstract

Little is known of how bacterial diversity in soils varies with elevation. One previous study found a decline with elevation, whereas another found no trend. We chose Mount Fuji of Japan as a geologically and topographically simple mountain system. Samples were taken at elevational intervals, between the base of the mountain at 1,000 m and its summit at 3,700 m. Polymerase chain reaction-amplified soil DNA for the bacterial 16S gene targeting V1–V3 region was pyrosequenced using the 454 Roche machine, and taxonomically classified with reference to a bioinformatic database. There was a significant “peak” in total bacterial diversity at around 2,500 m above the tree line with a decline towards the highest elevations around 3,700 m near the summit. Individual bacterial phyla show distinct trends—increase, decrease, or a mid-elevational “bulge” in diversity. Bacterial diversity does not parallel woody plant or herbaceous plant diversity. We suggest that beyond the tree and vegetation line, the more extreme temperature fluctuations, stronger UV, lack of nutrients, and more frequent disturbance of the loose substrate of these slopes allows less competition and greater bacterial species diversity due to “lottery” recruitment. However, at the highest elevations, the physiological challenges are so extreme that fewer bacterial species are capable of surviving.

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Acknowledgments

DS is supported by the Korean Government Scholarship Program, Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, South Korea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-742, South Korea

    Dharmesh Singh, Mincheol Kim, Jongsik Chun & Jonathan M. Adams

  2. Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Shinshu University, Asahi 3-1-1, Matsumoto, 390-8621, Japan

    Koichi Takahashi

Authors
  1. Dharmesh Singh
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  2. Koichi Takahashi
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  3. Mincheol Kim
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  4. Jongsik Chun
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  5. Jonathan M. Adams
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan M. Adams.

Electronic Supplementary Materials

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary Table S1

Geographic and climatic information about the samples (XLS 36.5 kb)

Supplementary Table S2

Diversity indices (XLS 34.0 kb)

Supplementary Table S3

Relative average abundance of all bacterial phyla (XLS 35.0 kb)

Supplementary Figure 1

Relationship between soil pH and bacterial diversity (GIF 15.1 kb)

High resolution image (EPS 18.6 mb)

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Singh, D., Takahashi, K., Kim, M. et al. A Hump-Backed Trend in Bacterial Diversity with Elevation on Mount Fuji, Japan. Microb Ecol 63, 429–437 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-011-9900-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-011-9900-1

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