Claudia Lüke, Peter Frenzel, Adrian Ho, Dian Fiantis, Peter Schad, Bellinda Schneider, Lorenz Schwark, Sri Rahayu Utami
Studies addressing microbial biogeography have increased during the past decade, but research on microbial distribution patterns is still in its infancies, and many aspects are only poorly understood. Here, we compared the methanotroph community in paddy soils sampled in Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Italy, focusing on the distance-decay relationship. We used the pmoA gene as marker for methanotroph diversity in terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism, microarray and pyrosequencing approaches. We could observe a significant increase of β-diversity with geographical distance across continents (12000km). Measured environmental parameters explained only a small amount of data variation, and we found no evidence for dispersal limitation. Thus, we propose historical contingencies being responsible for the observed patterns. Furthermore, we performed an in-depth analysis of type II methanotroph pmoA distribution at the sequence level. We used ordination analysis to project sequence dissimilarities into a three-dimensional space (multidimensional scaling). The ordination suggests that type II methanotrophs in paddy fields can be divided into five major groups. However, these groups were found to be distributed in all soils independent of the geographic origin. By including tropical field sites (Indonesia and Vietnam) into the analysis, we further observed the first paddy fields harbouring a methanotroph community depleted in type II methanotrophs. © 2013 Society for Applied Microbiology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg, D-35043, Karl-von-Frisch-Str.10, Germany; Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, 6525 AJ, Heyendaalsweg 135, Netherlands; Laboratory for Microbial Ecology and Technology (LabMET), Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent, 9000, Coupure Links 653, Belgium; Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Andalas University, Padang, 25163, Kampus Unand Limau Manis, Indonesia; Department Ecology and Ecosystem Management, Center of Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technische Universität München, Freising-Weihenstephan, D-85350, Lehrstuhl für Bodenkunde, Germany; Institute of Geosciences, University Kiel, Kiel, 24118, Ludewig-Meyn-Straße 10, Germany; WA-OIGC, Curtin University, Perth, WA, 6845, Australia; Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Brawijaya University, Jalan Veteran, East Java, Malang 65145, Indonesia
