Biodiversity patterns of soil ciliates along salinity gradients

We evaluated ciliate diversity in saline soils with a salinity range from 6.5 to 65 psu by the morphological method of the Ludox-quantitative protargol stain (QPS) and the molecular techniques of ciliate-specific clone library and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis. No active ciliates could be detected with the Ludox-QPS method, while high molecular diversity of ciliates was found. The highest ciliate molecular diversity was obtained from the soil at salinity of 8.9 psu, moderate diversity was found at salinity of 6.5 psu, and the diversity sharply decreased at salinity of 50.5 psu. By contrast, the number of ciliate classes clearly decreased with increasing soil salinity: six, five, four and two classes from sites with salinity of 6.5 psu, 8.9 psu, 29.5 psu and 50.5 psu, respectively. Ciliate diversity pattern is different from that of bacteria, whose diversity is also high in extremely saline environments. Meanwhile, the composition of ciliate community was significantly different along salinity gradient. Colpodea and Oligohymenophorea were diverse in soils at salinity less than 29.5 psu, while absent in soils with salinity above 50.5 psu. BIOENV analysis indicated soil salinity and water content were the main factors regulating the distribution of ciliates in saline soils.