Active Methanotrophs and Their Response to Temperature in Marine Environments: An Experimental Study
2021
Jing Li | Xiaoqing Xu | Changling Liu | Nengyou Wu | Zhilei Sun | Xingliang He | Ye Chen
Aerobic methane (CH<sub>4</sub>) oxidation plays a significant role in marine CH<sub>4</sub> consumption. Temperature changes resulting from, for example, global warming, have been suggested to be able to influence methanotrophic communities and their CH<sub>4</sub> oxidation capacity. However, exact knowledge regarding temperature controls on marine aerobic methane oxidation is still missing. In this study, CH<sub>4</sub> consumption and the methanotrophic community structure were investigated by incubating sediments from shallow (Bohai Bay) and deep marine environments (East China Sea) at 4, 15, and 28 °C for up to 250 days. The results show that the abundance of the methanotrophic population, dominated by the family Methylococcaceae (type I methanotrophs), was significantly elevated after all incubations and that aerobic methane oxidation for both areas had a strong temperature sensitivity. A positive correlation between the CH<sub>4</sub> oxidation rate and temperature was witnessed in the Bohai Bay incubations, whereas for the East China Sea incubations, the optimum temperature was 15 °C. The systematic variations of pmoA OTUs between the Bohai Bay and East China Sea incubations indicated that the exact behaviors of CH<sub>4</sub> oxidation rates with temperature are related to the different methanotrophic community structures in shallow and deep seas. These results are of great significance for quantitatively evaluating the biodegradability of CH<sub>4</sub> in different marine environments.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by Directory of Open Access Journals
