Moso Bamboo Invasion Reshapes Community Structure of Denitrifying Bacteria in Rhizosphere of Alsophila spinulosa

The uncontrolled invasion of moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) dramatically alters soil nitrogen cycling and destroys the natural habitat of Alsophila spinulosa. Nevertheless, no clear evidence points out the role of denitrifying bacteria in the invasion of bamboo into the habitat of A. spinulosa. In the present study, we found that low (importance value 0.0008), moderate (0.6551), and high (0.9326) bamboo invasions dramatically altered the underground root biomass of both P. pubescens and A. spinulosa. The root biomass of A. spinulosa was maximal at moderate invasion, indicating that intermediate disturbance might contribute to the growth and survival of the colonized plant. Successful bamboo invasion significantly increased rhizospheric soil available nitrogen content of A. spinulosa, coupled with elevated denitrifying bacterial abundance and diversity. Shewanella, Chitinophaga, and Achromobacter were the primary genera in the three invasions, whereas high bamboo invasion harbored more denitrifying bacteria and higher abundance than moderate and low invasions. Further correlation analysis found that most soil denitrifying bacteria were positively correlated with soil organic matter and available nitrogen but negatively correlated with pH and water content. In addition, our findings illustrated that two denitrifying bacteria, Chitinophaga and Sorangium, might be essential indicators for evaluating the effects of bamboo invasion on the growth of A. spinulosa. Collectively, this study found that moso bamboo invasion could change the nitrogen cycling of colonized habitats through alterations of denitrifying bacteria and provided valuable perspectives for profound recognizing the invasive impacts and mechanisms of bamboo expansion.

Are nitrogen and carbon cycle processes impacted by common stream antibiotics? A comparative assessment of single vs. mixture exposures

A variety of antibiotics are ubiquitous in all freshwater ecosystems that receive wastewater. A wide variety of antibiotics have been developed to kill problematic bacteria and fungi through targeted application, and their use has contributed significantly to public health and livestock management. Unfortunately, a substantial fraction of the antibiotics applied to humans, pets and livestock end up in wastewater, and ultimately many of these chemicals enter freshwater ecosystems. The effect of adding chemicals that are intentionally designed to kill microbes, on freshwater microbial communities remains poorly understood. There are reasons to be concerned, as microbes play an essential role in nutrient uptake, carbon fixation and denitrification in freshwater ecosystems. Chemicals that reduce or alter freshwater microbial communities might reduce their capacity to degrade the excess nutrients and organic matter that characterize wastewater. We performed a laboratory experiment in which we exposed microbial community from unexposed stream sediments to three commonly detected antibiotics found in urban wastewater and urban streams (sulfamethoxazole, danofloxacin, and erythromycin). We assessed how the form and concentration of inorganic nitrogen, microbial carbon, and nitrogen cycling processes changed in response to environmentally relevant doses (10 μg/L) of each of these antibiotics individually and in combination. We expected to find that all antibiotics suppressed rates of microbial mineralization and nitrogen transformations and we anticipated that this suppression of microbial activity would be greatest in the combined treatment. Contrary to our expectations we measured few significant changes in microbially mediated functions in response to our experimental antibiotic dosing. We found no difference in functional gene abundance of key nitrogen cycling genes nosZ, mcrA, nirK, and amoA genes, and we measured no treatment effects on NO3- uptake or N2O, N2, CH4, CO2 production over the course of our seven-day experiment. In the mixture treatment, we measured significant increases in NH4+ concentrations over the first 24 hours of the experiment, which were indistinguishable from controls within six hours. Our results suggest remarkable community resistance to pressure antibiotic exposure poses on naïve stream sediments.