Comparative microbial communities in tidal flats sediment on Incheon, South Korea

Coastal ecosystems, play critical ecological roles of which tidal flats are a significant component of coastal wetlands, such as habitat and nutrient cycling in aquatic biology. Microbial communities in tidal flats are known to play vital roles of self-purification. And the microbial ecology of the sediment is easily affected by human activities and pollution. In this paper, we applied pyrosequencing technology to investigate microbial communities in three different tidal flats (Ganghwa Island, Ongnyeon land region and Yeongjong Island) on the Incheon, Korea peninsula. A total of 16,906 sequences were obtained. We used these sequences to identify the dominant phyla in the three tidal flats: Proteobacteria, Chloroflexi, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes. The composition of the bacterial community of Ganghwa Island and the Ongnyeon region were more similar to each other than they were to the bacterial community of Yeongjong Island. Simpson's dominance index of Yeongjong Island was higher than that of the other regions, and the Shannon diversity index of this region was the lowest. Previous research of samples in these regions indicated that the three tidal flats had similar geochemical characteristics. However, their bacterial communities were rather distinct. This might be because the analysis of microbial communities and physiochemical analysis have different perspectives. Therefore, the pyrosequencing of a bacterial community with physiochemical analysis is recommended as an effective monitoring tool for the comprehensive management of tidal flats.