Microorganisms in Peat Swamp Forests: Abundance, Diversity, Function, Activity

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecology and Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 September 2023) | Viewed by 1099

Special Issue Editors

Department of Soil Biology, Faculty of Soil Science, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119991 Moscow, Russia
Interests: peatlands; microbiology; soil science; ecology
Laboratory for Study of Soil Ecological Functions, A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 119071 Moscow, Russia
Interests: mycology; ecology; soil science

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Peat swamp forests are swamps at the “forest” stage of their development. According to expert estimates, swamps and wetlands cover from 4% to 6% of the Earth’s surface. Swamps have their own role in the formation of the gas composition of the atmosphere, regulate the circulation of water, carbon and other natural components, and contribute to preserving biodiversity, including microbial biodiversity.

Peat deposit is a bank of microorganisms, representing a wide variety of groups. Even though microbial communities of various swamps have been analyzed for more than a century, there are still many questions to be answered. Particularly important are the following ones: what groups and taxa of microorganisms prevail in swamps of different genesis and what ecological functions are they able to perform?

The topic of this Special Issue is the assessment of abundance, diversity, viability, and activity of microbial complexes in the phyllosphere, rhizosphere, and litter and soils of peat swamp forests. Particular attention will be paid to studies where microbial complexes are analyzed via molecular–biological methods, as well as to the search for microorganisms with high functional and antagonistic potential.

Dr. Alla Golovchenko
Dr. Tatiana Semenova
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • peatlands
  • peat swamp forest
  • Histosols
  • microbiology
  • molecular biology
  • metagenomics
  • ecology

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 2819 KiB  
Article
Diversity and Functional Potential of Prokaryotic Communities in Depth Profile of Boreo-Nemoral Minerotrophic Pine Swamp (European Russia)
by Alla V. Golovchenko, Tatiana G. Dobrovolskaya, Diyana Sh. Sokolova, Tatiana A. Gracheva, Yuliya A. Dorchenkova, Tamara V. Glukhova and Natalia A. Manucharova
Forests 2023, 14(12), 2313; https://doi.org/10.3390/f14122313 - 24 Nov 2023
Viewed by 794
Abstract
Natural peatlands represent a wide range of habitats that contribute to the conservation of biodiversity, including microbial biodiversity. Molecular biological methods make it possible to significantly increase the accounting of microbial diversity compared to the cultivation methods. The studies on microbial diversity in [...] Read more.
Natural peatlands represent a wide range of habitats that contribute to the conservation of biodiversity, including microbial biodiversity. Molecular biological methods make it possible to significantly increase the accounting of microbial diversity compared to the cultivation methods. The studies on microbial diversity in minerotrophic peatlands using molecular biological methods lag significantly behind such studies for ombrotrophic peatlands. In this work, we characterized the taxonomic composition and functional potential of the prokaryotic community of the minerotrophic pine swamp (fen) in the Tver region of northwestern Russia using high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene fragments. This study is unique, since it was carried out not in individual horizons but across the entire fen profile, taking into account the differentiation of the profile into the acrotelm and catotelm. The composition and dominants of bacterial and archaeal communities were determined not only at the level of phyla but also at the level of classes, families, and cultivated genera. The prokaryotic community of the studied fen was shown to have a high taxonomic diversity (28 bacterial and 10 archaeal phyla were identified). The profile differentiation of the taxonomic composition of prokaryotic communities is most clearly manifested in the analysis of the acrotelm and catotelm. In the bacterial communities of the acrotelm, the top three phyla included Acidobacteriota, Alphaproteobacteria, and Actinomycetota, in the catotelm—Betaproteobacteria, Bacteroidota, and Chloroflexota. In archaeal communities of the acrotelm, we discovered the monodominance of Nitrososphaerota, in the catotelm—the dominance of Bathyarchaeota and subdominance of Thermoplasmatota, Halobacterota, and Aenigmarchaeota. The hot spots of microbial diversity in the studied fen profile were found to be the 0–20 cm layer of the acrotelm and the 150–200 cm layer of the catotelm. In contrast to the taxonomic composition, the functional profiles of the prokaryotic communities of the acrotelm and catotelm were generally similar, except for methane metabolism, which was primarily carried out in the catotelm. Full article
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