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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2009, p. 7017-7025, Vol. 75, No. 22
0099-2240/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01544-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Low Taxon Richness of Bacterioplankton in High-Altitude Lakes of the Eastern Tibetan Plateau, with a Predominance of Bacteroidetes and Synechococcus spp.{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Peng Xing,1 Martin W. Hahn,2 and Qinglong L. Wu1*

State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, East Beijing Road 73, Nanjing 210008, People's Republic of China,1 Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Limnology, Mondseestrasse 9, A-5310 Mondsee, Austria2

Received 30 June 2009/ Accepted 8 September 2009

Plankton samples were collected from six remote freshwater and saline lakes located at altitudes of 3,204 to 4,718 m and 1,000 km apart within an area of ca. 1 million km2 on the eastern Tibetan Plateau to comparatively assess how environmental factors influence the diversity of bacterial communities in high-altitude lakes. The composition of the bacterioplankton was investigated by analysis of large clone libraries of 16S rRNA genes. Comparison of bacterioplankton diversities estimated for the six Tibetan lakes with reference data previously published for lakes located at lower altitudes indicated relatively low taxon richness in the Tibetan lakes. The estimated average taxon richness in the four Tibetan freshwater lakes was only one-fifth of the average taxon richness estimated for seven low-altitude reference lakes. This cannot be explained by low coverage of communities in the Tibetan lakes by the established libraries or by differences in habitat size. Furthermore, a comparison of the taxonomic compositions of bacterioplankton across the six Tibetan lakes revealed low overlap between their community compositions. About 70.9% of the operational taxonomic units (99% similarity) were specific to single lakes, and a relatively high percentage (11%) of sequences were <95% similar to publicly deposited sequences of cultured or uncultured bacteria. This beta diversity was explained by differences in salinity between lakes rather than by distance effects. Another characteristic of the investigated lakes was the predominance of Cyanobacteria (Synechococcus) and Bacteroidetes. These features of bacterioplankton diversity may reflect specific adaptation of various lineages to the environmental conditions in these high-altitude lakes.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, East Beijing Road 73, Nanjing 210008, People's Republic of China. Phone: 86-25-86882107. Fax: 86-25-57714759. E-mail: qlwu{at}niglas.ac.cn

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 18 September 2009.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://aem.asm.org/.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, November 2009, p. 7017-7025, Vol. 75, No. 22
0099-2240/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.01544-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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