title: Salinity drives archaeal distribution patterns in high altitude lake sediments on the Tibetan Plateau.
abstract: Archaeal communities and the factors regulating their diversity in high altitude lakes are poorly understood. Here, we provide the first high-throughput sequencing study of Archaea from Tibetan Plateau lake sediments. We analyzed twenty lake sediments from the world's highest and largest plateau and found diverse archaeal assemblages that clustered into groups dominated by methanogenic Euryarchaeota, Crenarchaeota and Halobacteria/mixed euryarchaeal phylotypes. Statistical analysis inferred that salinity was the major driver of community composition, and that archaeal diversity increased with salinity. Sediments with the highest salinities were mostly dominated by Halobacteria. Crenarchaeota dominated at intermediate salinities, and methanogens were present in all lake sediments, albeit most abundant at low salinities. The distribution patterns of the three functional types of methanogens (hydrogenotrophic, acetotrophic and methylotrophic) were also related to changes in salinity. Our results show that salinity is a key factor controlling archaeal community diversity and composition in lake sediments on a spatial scale that spans nearly 2000 km on the Tibetan Plateau.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Beijing 100101, China CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China yqliu@itpcas.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Yongqin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717, USA.
authors.forename: John C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Priscu
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Marine Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China.
authors.forename: Jinbo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg 35043, Germany.
authors.forename: Ralf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Conrad
authors.affiliation: Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717, USA.
authors.forename: Trista
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vick-Majors
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China.
authors.forename: Haiyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Juzhi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hou
mesh_terms: D000531:Altitude; D001105:Archaea / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000378:metabolism; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000737:chemistry / Q000382:microbiology*; D060106:Lakes / Q000737:chemistry / Q000382:microbiology*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D054712:Salinity; D012965:Sodium Chloride / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism; D018609:Tibet
chemical_list: D012965:Sodium Chloride
keywords: Tibetan Plateau; archaea; lake sediment; salinity