Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic

Permafrost-affected soils are among the most obvious ecosystems in which current microbial controls on organic matter decomposition are changing as a result of global warming. Warmer conditions in polygonal tundra will lead to a deepening of the seasonal active layer, provoking changes in microbial...

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Main Authors:	Frank-Fahle, Béatrice A., Yergeau, Étienne, Greer, Charles W., Lantuit, Hugues, Wagner, Dirk
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3885591/

id	pubmed-3885591
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-38855912014-01-10 Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic Frank-Fahle, Béatrice A. Yergeau, Étienne Greer, Charles W. Lantuit, Hugues Wagner, Dirk Research Article Permafrost-affected soils are among the most obvious ecosystems in which current microbial controls on organic matter decomposition are changing as a result of global warming. Warmer conditions in polygonal tundra will lead to a deepening of the seasonal active layer, provoking changes in microbial processes and possibly resulting in exacerbated carbon degradation under increasing anoxic conditions. To identify current microbial assemblages in carbon rich, water saturated permafrost environments, four polygonal tundra sites were investigated on Herschel Island and the Yukon Coast, Western Canadian Arctic. Ion Torrent sequencing of bacterial and archaeal 16S rRNA amplicons revealed the presence of all major microbial soil groups and indicated a local, vertical heterogeneity of the polygonal tundra soil community with increasing depth. Microbial diversity was found to be highest in the surface layers, decreasing towards the permafrost table. Quantitative PCR analysis of functional genes involved in carbon and nitrogen-cycling revealed a high functional potential in the surface layers, decreasing with increasing active layer depth. We observed that soil properties driving microbial diversity and functional potential varied in each study site. These results highlight the small-scale heterogeneity of geomorphologically comparable sites, greatly restricting generalizations about the fate of permafrost-affected environments in a warming Arctic. Public Library of Science 2014-01-08 /pmc/articles/PMC3885591/ /pubmed/24416279 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0084761 Text en © 2014 Frank-Fahle et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Frank-Fahle, Béatrice A. Yergeau, Étienne Greer, Charles W. Lantuit, Hugues Wagner, Dirk
spellingShingle	Frank-Fahle, Béatrice A. Yergeau, Étienne Greer, Charles W. Lantuit, Hugues Wagner, Dirk Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic
author_facet	Frank-Fahle, Béatrice A. Yergeau, Étienne Greer, Charles W. Lantuit, Hugues Wagner, Dirk
author_sort	Frank-Fahle, Béatrice A.
title	Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic
title_short	Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic
title_full	Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic
title_fullStr	Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic
title_full_unstemmed	Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic
title_sort	microbial functional potential and community composition in permafrost-affected soils of the nw canadian arctic
description	Permafrost-affected soils are among the most obvious ecosystems in which current microbial controls on organic matter decomposition are changing as a result of global warming. Warmer conditions in polygonal tundra will lead to a deepening of the seasonal active layer, provoking changes in microbial processes and possibly resulting in exacerbated carbon degradation under increasing anoxic conditions. To identify current microbial assemblages in carbon rich, water saturated permafrost environments, four polygonal tundra sites were investigated on Herschel Island and the Yukon Coast, Western Canadian Arctic. Ion Torrent sequencing of bacterial and archaeal 16S rRNA amplicons revealed the presence of all major microbial soil groups and indicated a local, vertical heterogeneity of the polygonal tundra soil community with increasing depth. Microbial diversity was found to be highest in the surface layers, decreasing towards the permafrost table. Quantitative PCR analysis of functional genes involved in carbon and nitrogen-cycling revealed a high functional potential in the surface layers, decreasing with increasing active layer depth. We observed that soil properties driving microbial diversity and functional potential varied in each study site. These results highlight the small-scale heterogeneity of geomorphologically comparable sites, greatly restricting generalizations about the fate of permafrost-affected environments in a warming Arctic.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3885591/
_version_	1612045797491212288

Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic

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