Similarities and Contrasts in the Archaeal Community of Two Japanese Mountains: Mt. Norikura Compared to Mt. Fuji.

The community ecology, abundance, and diversity patterns of soil archaea are poorly understood-despite the fact that they are a major branch of life that is ubiquitous and important in nitrogen cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. We set out to investigate the elevational patterns of archaeal ecology, and how these compare with other groups of organisms. Many studies of different groups of organisms (plants, birds, etc.) have shown a series of distinct communities with elevation, and often a diversity maximum in mid-elevations. We investigated the soil archaeal communities on Mt. Norikura, Japan, using 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene. There was a strong mid-elevation maximum in diversity, and a mid-elevation maximum in abundance of soil archaea 16S rRNA and amoA genes. These diversity and abundance maximums could not be correlated with any identifiable soil parameter, nor plant diversity. Discrete, predictable communities of archaea occurred at each elevational level, also not explicable in terms of pH or major nutrients. When we compared the archaeal community and diversity patterns with those found in an earlier study of Mt Fuji, both mountains showed mid-elevation maximums in diversity and abundance of archaea, possibly a result of some common environmental factor such as soil disturbance frequency. However, they showed distinct sets of archaeal communities at similar elevational sampling points. Presumably, the difference reflects their distinct geology (Norikura being andesitic, while Fuji is basaltic) and the resulting combinations of soil chemistry and environmental conditions, although no explanatory variable was found. Clearly, many soil archaea have strongly defined niches and will only occur in a narrow subset of the range of possible climate and soil conditions. The findings of a mid-elevation diversity maximum on Norikura provides a further instance of how widespread this unexplained pattern is in nature, in a wide variety of groups of organisms.