Zinc contamination decreases the bacterial diversity of agricultural soil

Around half a million tonnes of biosolids (sewage sludge dry solids) are applied to agricultural land in the United Kingdom each year, and this may increase to 732000 t by 2005/6. The heavy metals contained in biosolids may permanently degrade the microbial decomposer communities of agricultural soi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	FEMS microbiology ecology Vol. 43; no. 1; pp. 13 - 19
Main Authors:	Moffett, B.F, Nicholson, F.A, Uwakwe, N.C, Chambers, B.J, Harris, J.A, Hill, T.C.J
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-02-2003 Blackwell Oxford University Press
Subjects:	Agricultural land agricultural soils Agronomy. Soil science and plant productions Amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis Animal, plant and microbial ecology Bacteria Bacterial diversity Biochemistry and biology Biological and medical sciences Biosolids Chemical, physicochemical, biochemical and biological properties clones Ecology Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Gram-positive bacteria Heavy metal Heavy metals Microbial ecology Microbiology Microorganisms pH effects Physics, chemistry, biochemistry and biology of agricultural and forest soils polluted soils Ribosomal DNA Rubrobacter radiotolerans Sampling strategy Sewage sludge Sludge drying Soil Soil contamination Soil pollution Soil science Soil stresses Soil treatment Soils species diversity Toxicity Zinc United Kingdom Europe Amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis Sampling strategy Bacterial diversity Sewage sludge Zinc Heavy metal Ribosomal DNA Decomposer Long term Contamination Soils Gram positive bacteria pH Microbial community
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Summary:	Around half a million tonnes of biosolids (sewage sludge dry solids) are applied to agricultural land in the United Kingdom each year, and this may increase to 732000 t by 2005/6. The heavy metals contained in biosolids may permanently degrade the microbial decomposer communities of agricultural soils. We used amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis of the extractable bacterial fraction to compare the diversity of a zinc-contaminated soil (400 mg kg-1 Zn; pH 5.7 and 1.36% Corg) with that of a control soil (57 mg kg-1 Zn; pH 6.2 and 1.40% Corg) from a long-term sewage sludge experiment established in 1982 at ADAS Gleadthorpe. Comparison of the restriction fragment length polymorphisms of 236 clones from each soil suggested that the stress caused by zinc toxicity had lowered bacterial diversity. There were 120 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in the control soil, but only 90 in the treated soil, a decrease of 25%. While the control soil had 82 single-occurrence OTUs the contaminated soil had only 52. The fall in diversity was accompanied by a decrease in evenness. The most abundant OTUs in the contaminated soil (which tended to be common to both soils) accounted for a higher proportion of clones than in the control. The most dominant OTU, in both soils, belonged to the Rubrobacter radiotolerans group of the high G+C Gram-positive bacteria. The data was also used to develop efficient sampling strategies.
Bibliography:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-6941.2003.tb01041.x Institute of Water and Environment, Cranfield University, Silsoe, Bedfordshire MK45 4DT, UK. ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23
ISSN:	0168-6496 1574-6941
DOI:	10.1111/j.1574-6941.2003.tb01041.x