Biology subjects

Rijkers, R.

Publications and source records attributed to Rijkers, R..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2022

Abrupt permafrost thaw triggers microbial bloom and increased activity of microbial predators

Permafrost soils store a substantial part of the global soil carbon and nitrogen. However global warming causes abrupt erosion and gradual thaw, which make these stocks vulnerable to microbial decomposition into greenhouse gases. Here, we investigated the microbial response to abrupt in situ permafrost thaw. We sequenced the total RNA of a 1 m deep soil core consisting of up to 26500-year-old permafrost material from an active abrupt erosion site. We analysed the microbial community in the active layer soil, the recently thawed, and the intact permafrost and found maximum RNA:DNA ratios indicating a microbial bloom in recently thawed permafrost. Several fast-growing prokaryotic taxa dominated thawed permafrost, including Sphingobacteriales, Burkholderiales, and Nitrosomonadales. Overall, the thaw state and soil moisture consistently explained changes in community composition, with especially the permafrost community being significantly distinct from thawed soils. Predation correlated with changes in prokaryotic composition. Bacterial grazers were dominated by Myxococcales and abundant in the active layer. In contrast, protozoa, especially Cercozoa and Ciliophora, doubled in relative abundance in thawed layers. Our findings highlight the ecological importance of a rapid development of microbial blooms as well as the successive predation as biological control mechanism in abruptly thawing permafrost. One sentence summaryUsing total RNA from an up to 26500-year-old abruptly eroding permafrost site in Greenland, we described a microbial bloom and its controls, including bacterial and microeukaryotic predators. O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=146 SRC="FIGDIR/small/499897v2_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (51K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@10ab79eorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@9d0146org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1bec509org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@179f397_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2022

Community adaptation to temperature explains abrupt soil bacterial community shift along a geothermal gradient on Iceland

Understanding how and why soil microbial communities respond to temperature changes is important for understanding the drivers of microbial distribution and abundance. A unique area in Iceland, where soil temperatures have increased due to geothermic activity four years prior to sampling, creating a stable gradient of ambient to +40{degrees}C, allowed us to investigate the shape of the response to warming of soil bacterial communities, and their associated community temperature adaptation. We used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing to profile bacterial communities, and bacterial growth based assays (3H Leu-incorporation) to characterize community adaptation using a temperature sensitivity index (SI, log (growth at 40{degrees}C/4{degrees}C)). Samples were taken from [≥]9 levels of warming (covering almost up to +40{degrees}C above ambient soil temperature), under both grassland (Agrostis capillaris) and forest (Picea sitchensis) vegetation. The soils had very different community composition, but temperature adaptation was the same. Both diversity and community composition as well SI showed similar threshold dynamics along the soil temperature gradient. There were no significant changes up to soil warming of approx. 6-9 {degrees}C, beyond which all indices shifted in parallel. The consistency of these responses gives strong support for a decisive role for direct temperature effects in driving bacterial community shifts along soil temperature gradients.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2017

Anaerobic methanotrophic communities thrive in deep submarine permafrost

Thawing submarine permafrost is a source of methane to the subsurface biosphere. Methane oxidation in submarine permafrost sediments has been proposed, but the responsible microorganisms remain uncharacterized. We analyzed archaeal communities and identified distinct anaerobic methanotrophic (ANME-2a/b, ANME-2d) assemblages in frozen and completely thawed submarine permafrost sediments. Besides archaea potentially involved in AOM we found a large diversity of archaea mainly belonging to Bathyarchaeota, Thaumarchaeota, and Euryarchaeota. Methane concentrations and {delta}13C-methane signatures distinguish horizons of potential anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) coupled either to sulfate reduction in a sulfate-methane transition zone (SMTZ) or to the reduction of other electron acceptors, such as iron, manganese or nitrate. Analysis of functional marker genes (mcrA) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) corroborate AOM communities in submarine permafrost sediments potentially active at low temperatures. Extrapolating potential AOM rates, when scaled to the total area of expected submarine permafrost thaw, reveals that methane could be consumed at rates between 8 and 120 Tg C per year, which is comparable to other AOM habitats such as seeps, continental SMTZ and wetlands. We thus propose that AOM is active where submarine permafrost thaws and needs to be accounted for in global methane budgets.

microbiology↗