Abstract
To investigate the microbial utilization of organic carbon in peatland ecosystem, water samples were collected from the Dajiuhu Peatland and nearby lakes, central China across the year of 2014. The acridine orange (AO) staining and Biolog Eco microplates were used to numerate microbial counts and determine the carbon utilization of microbial communities. Meanwhile, physicochemical characteristics were measured for subsequent analysis of the correlation between microbial carbon utilization and environmental factors. Results indicated that total microbial counts were between 106–107 cells/L. Microbial diversities and carbon utilization rates showed a similar pattern, highest in September and lowest in November. Microbial communities in the peat pore waters preferred to utilize N-bearing carbon sources such as amines and amino acids compared with microbial communities in lakes. The network analysis of microbial utilization of 31 carbon substrates clearly distinguished microbial communities from peat pore waters and those from lakes. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed the total organic nitrogen content (P=0.03, F=2.5) and daily average temperature (P=0.034, F=2.4) significantly controlled microbial carbon utilization throughout the sampling period. Our report is the first one to address the temporal and spatial variations of carbon utilization of microbial communities which are closely related to the decomposition of organic matter in the Dajiuhu Peatland in context of climate warming.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Ph D students Jiantao Xue, Liduan Zheng, Ting Huang and master students Yiming Zhang, Qianglong Qiao and Zhiqi Zhang for their help with field work. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41572325 and 41130207). The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-017-0818-5..
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Wang, RC., Wang, HM., Xiang, X. et al. Temporal and Spatial Variations of Microbial Carbon Utilization in Water Bodies from the Dajiuhu Peatland, Central China. J. Earth Sci. 29, 969–976 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-017-0818-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-017-0818-5