Distribution of ammonia oxidizers in relation to vegetation characteristics in the Qilian Mountains, northwestern China

Abstract. Nitrogen is the major limiting nutrient in cold environments, and its availability is strongly dependent on nitrification. However, microbial communities driving this process remain largely uncharacterized in alpine meadow soils in northwestern China, namely those catalyzing the rate-limiting step of ammonia oxidation. In this study, ammonia-oxidizing communities in alpine meadow soils were characterized by real-time PCR and clone sequencing by targeting on amoA genes, which putatively encode ammonia monooxygenase subunit A. The results demonstrated that ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) outnumbered ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) in the alpine meadow soils. Most of the AOA phylotypes detected in the study region fell within typical Group I.1b of Thaumarchaeota. Interestingly, a new ammonia-oxidizing archaeal group named "Kobresia meadow soil group" was found. Phylogenetic analysis of AOB communities exhibited a dominance of Nitrosospira-like sequences affiliated to beta-Proteobacteria. Compared with other alpine environments, Qilian Mountains had a great phylogenetic diversity of ammonia oxidizers. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) analysis showed that distinct AOA/AOB phylotype groups were attributed to different meadow types, reflecting an overall distribution of ammonia-oxidizing communities associated with meadow types. Redundancy Analysis (RDA) analysis showed that Axis 1 (90.9%) together with Axis 2 (9.1%) explained all the variables while Axis 1 exhibited a significant explanatory power. So that vegetation coverage mostly correlated to Axis 1 was the most powerful environmental factor in the study region. Characteristics of ammonia-oxidizing communities showed a close association with vegetation coverage.