High diversity and distinctive community structure of bacteria on glaciers in China revealed by 454 pyrosequencing

The bacterial diversity, community structure and preliminary microbial biogeographic pattern were assessed on glacier surfaces, including three northern glaciers (cold glaciers) and three southern glaciers (temperate glaciers) in China that experienced distinct climatic conditions. Pyrosequencing revealed that bacterial diversities were surprisingly high. With respect to operational taxonomic units (OTUs), Proteobacteria was the most dominant phylum on the glacier surfaces, especially Betaproteobacteria. Significant differences of the bacterial communities were observed between northern and southern glacier surfaces. The rare and abundant populations showed similar clustering patterns to the whole community. The analysis of the culturable bacterial compositions from four glaciers supported this conclusion. Redundancy analysis (RDA) and partial Mantel tests indicated that annual mean temperature, as well as geographical distance, was significantly correlated with the bacterial communities on the glaciers. It was inferred that bacterial communities on northern and southern glacier surfaces experienced different climate, water and nutrient patterns, and consequently evolved different lifestyles.