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Spatio-Temporal Variations in the Abundance and Community Structure of Nitrospira in a Tropical Bay

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Abstract

Nitrospira is the most diverse genus of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria, and its members are widely spread in various natural and engineered ecosystems. In this study, the phylogenetic diversity of Nitrospira and monthly changes of its abundance from Zhanjiang Bay were investigated. Phylogenetic analysis showed that among 58 OTUs with high abundance, 74% were not affiliated with any previously described Nitrospira species, revealing a previously unrecognized diversity of coastal Nitrospira. The abundances of both Nitrospira and Nitrospina exhibited a significantly monthly change. During most of the months, abundance of Nitrospina was greater than that of Nitrospira. In particle-attached communities, either abundance of Nitrospina or Nitrospira was highly correlated with that of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA), whereas abundance of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria was only highly correlated with that of Nitrospina. In free-living communities, either abundance of Nitrospina or Nitrospira was correlated only with that of AOA. These results suggest that both Nitrospira and Nitrospina can be involved in nitrite oxidation by coupling with AOA, but Nitrospina may play a greater role than Nitrospira in this tropical bay.

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Data Availability

All raw sequence reads in this study were deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under accession number PRJNA606648.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Qingmei Zhu and Fajin Chen for providing partial nutrient data in water from Zhanjiang Bay.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41971125 and 41725002), the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (2018A030313164), and the Innovation Study Project of East China Normal University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China

    Hong-Po Dong & Li-Jun Hou

  2. School of Ocean and Meteorology, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, 524088, China

    Tie-Qiang Mao, Yan-Qun Li & Wen-Na Yang

  3. Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science, Ministry of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200061, China

    Hong-Po Dong

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  1. Tie-Qiang Mao
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Correspondence to Hong-Po Dong.

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Mao, TQ., Li, YQ., Dong, HP. et al. Spatio-Temporal Variations in the Abundance and Community Structure of Nitrospira in a Tropical Bay. Curr Microbiol 77, 3492–3503 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-020-02193-y

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