Generalized soil Thaumarchaeota community in weathering rock and saprolite

Relatively little is known of the archaeal communities associated with endolithic environments, compared to other microbial groups such as bacteria and fungi. Analyzing the pyrosequenced archaeal 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene V1-V3 region, we investigated the archaeal community associated with aboveground-exfoliated weathering layers of a granite gneiss, and of the saprolite derived from this rock at 1 m depth below the soil surface, in a forested hilly area south of Seoul, South Korea. In both these sites, an archaeal community dominated by the phylum Thaumarchaeota was identified. The archaeal community in all cases closely resembled that of the surface layer of acidic soils in temperate climates of Korea. It appears that there is no clear distinction in archaeal community composition between a soil and a rock and a saprolite despite a tremendous difference in the concentration of total nitrogen and organic carbon. Of the chemical properties we measured, pH was the best predictor of the archaeal community composition and relative abundance of thaumarchaeal subphyla. These findings reinforce the view that soil archaea are mostly generalists, whose ecology is not closely dependent on nitrogen concentration or soil organic matter status, the presence of living roots, or the abundant presence of any other biota.