Hypolithic microbial community of quartz pavement in the high-altitude tundra of central Tibet - PubMed (original) (raw)

Hypolithic microbial community of quartz pavement in the high-altitude tundra of central Tibet

Fiona K Y Wong et al. Microb Ecol. 2010 Nov.

Abstract

The hypolithic microbial community associated with quartz pavement at a high-altitude tundra location in central Tibet is described. A small-scale ecological survey indicated that 36% of quartz rocks were colonized. Community profiling using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism revealed no significant difference in community structure among a number of colonized rocks. Real-time quantitative PCR and phylogenetic analysis of environmental phylotypes obtained from clone libraries were used to elucidate community structure across all domains. The hypolithon was dominated by cyanobacterial phylotypes (73%) with relatively low frequencies of other bacterial phylotypes, largely represented by the chloroflexi, actinobacteria, and bacteriodetes. Unidentified crenarchaeal phylotypes accounted for 4% of recoverable phylotypes, while algae, fungi, and mosses were indicated by a small fraction of recoverable phylotypes.

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Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

a Quartz pavement at the central Tibetan field location, quadrat = 1 m2; b Typical subsurface hypolithic colonization on a quartz rock, black line drawn with marker pen indicates ground surface level, scale bar = 2 cm

Figure 2

Figure 2

Relative abundance of hypolithic phylotypes across all domains from quartz in Tibetan tundra

Figure 3

Figure 3

Phylogenetic relationships among cyanobacterial 16S rRNA phylotypes recovered from hypolithon in Tibetan tundra. Phylotypes recovered during this study are shown in bold type. Tree topologies are supported by Bayesian posterior probabilities (first number) and bootstrap values for 1,000 replications (second number). Scale bar represents 0.1 nucleotide changes per position

Figure 4

Figure 4

Phylogenetic relationships among bacterial 16S rRNA phylotypes recovered from hypolithon in Tibetan tundra. Phylotypes recovered during this study are shown in bold type. Tree topologies are supported by Bayesian posterior probabilities (first number) and bootstrap values for 1,000 replications (second number). Scale bar represents 0.1 nucleotide changes per position

Figure 5

Figure 5

Phylogenetic relationships among archaeal 18S rRNA phylotypes recovered from hypolithon in Tibetan tundra. Phylotypes recovered during this study are shown in bold type. Tree topologies are supported by Bayesian posterior probabilities (first number) and bootstrap values for 1,000 replications (second number). Scale bar represents 0.1 nucleotide changes per position

Figure 6

Figure 6

Phylogenetic relationships among algal 18S rRNA phylotypes recovered from hypolithon in Tibetan tundra. Phylotypes recovered during this study are shown in bold type. Tree topologies are supported by Bayesian posterior probabilities (first number) and bootstrap values for 1,000 replications (second number). Scale bar represents 0.1 nucleotide changes per position

Figure 7

Figure 7

Phylogenetic relationships among fungal 18S rRNA phylotypes recovered from hypolithon in Tibetan tundra. Phylotypes recovered during this study are shown in bold type. Tree topologies are supported by Bayesian posterior probabilities (first number) and bootstrap values for 1,000 replications (second number). Scale bar represents 0.1 nucleotide changes per position

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