Abundance and Functional Importance of Complete Ammonia Oxidizers and Other Nitrifiers in a Riparian Ecosystem.

The discovery of complete ammonia oxidation (comammox) has altered our understanding of nitrification, which is the rate-limiting process in the global nitrogen cycle. However, understanding the ecological role of comammox or its contribution to nitrification in both natural and artificial ecosystems is still in its infancy. Here, we investigated the community distribution and function of comammox bacteria in riparian ecosystems and analyzed interactions between comammox and other nitrogen cycling microorganisms. The comammox bacterial abundance and rate were higher in summer than in winter and higher in nonrhizosphere soils than in the rhizosphere. Fringe soils in the riparian zone comprise a comammox hotspot, where the abundance (2.58 × 108 copies g-1) and rate (0.86 mg N kg-1 d-1) of comammox were not only higher than at other sampling sites but also higher than those of other ammonia oxidation processes. The comammox rate correlated significantly positively with relative abundance of the comammox species Candidatus Nitrospira nitrificans but not with that of the species Candidatus Nitrospira nitrosa. Analysis of comammox interaction with other ammonia-oxidizing processes revealed ammonia-oxidizing archaea to dominate interface soils, comammox to dominate in fringe soils, and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) to dominate in interface sediments of the riparian zone. These results indicate that comammox may constitute an important and currently underestimated process of microbial nitrification in riparian zone ecosystems.

Citation

Shanyun Wang, Xiaomin Wang, Yingying Jiang, Chang Han, Mike S M Jetten, Lorenz Schwark, Guibing Zhu. Abundance and Functional Importance of Complete Ammonia Oxidizers and Other Nitrifiers in a Riparian Ecosystem. Environmental science & technology. 2021 Apr 20;55(8):4573-4584

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PMID: 33733744

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