Affiliation:
1. Department of Ecological Microbiology
2. Department of Soil Ecology, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Norway spruce (
Picea abies
) forests exhibit lower annual atmospheric methane consumption rates than do European beech (
Fagus sylvatica
) forests. In the current study,
pmoA
(encoding a subunit of membrane-bound CH
4
monooxygenase) genes from three temperate forest ecosystems with both beech and spruce stands were analyzed to assess the potential effect of tree species on methanotrophic communities. A
pmoA
sequence difference of 7% at the derived protein level correlated with the species-level distance cutoff value of 3% based on the 16S rRNA gene. Applying this distance cutoff, higher numbers of species-level
pmoA
genotypes were detected in beech than in spruce soil samples, all affiliating with upland soil cluster α (USCα). Additionally, two deep-branching genotypes (named 6 and 7) were present in various soil samples not affiliating with
pmoA
or
amoA
. Abundance of USCα
pmoA
genes was higher in beech soils and reached up to (1.2 ± 0.2) × 10
8
pmoA
genes per g of dry weight. Calculated atmospheric methane oxidation rates per cell yielded the same trend. However, these values were below the theoretical threshold necessary for facilitating cell maintenance, suggesting that USCα species might require alternative carbon or energy sources to thrive in forest soils. These collective results indicate that the methanotrophic diversity and abundance in spruce soils are lower than those of beech soils, suggesting that tree species-related factors might influence the
in situ
activity of methanotrophs.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Ecology,Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology,Food Science,Biotechnology
Cited by
130 articles.
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