Archaeal and bacterial ammonia-oxidisers in soil: the quest for niche specialisation and differentiation.

By J. Prosser, G. Nicol. Trends in Microbiology, 2012

1,036 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Autotrophic archaeal and bacterial ammonia-oxidisers (AOA and AOB) drive soil nitrification. Ammonia limitation, mixotrophy, and pH have been suggested as factors providing niche specialisation and differentiation between soil AOA and AOB. However, current data from genomes, cultures, field studies, and microcosms suggest that no single factor discriminates between AOA and AOB. In addition, there appears to be sufficient physiological diversity within each group for growth and activity in all soils investigated, with the exception of acidic soils (pH <5.5), which are dominated by AOA. Future investigation of niche specialisation in ammonia-oxidisers, and other microbial communities, requires characterisation of a wider range of environmentally representative cultures, emphasis on experimental studies rather than surveys, and greater consideration of small-scale soil heterogeneity.

Subfields: Ecology, Environmental Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/559bb910adabe697d85cf870582464e3166e67d1

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In Ecology

1. S. Medinets
2. K. Butterbach‐Bahl
3. Peter M. Groffman
4. G. Du
5. H. Rennenberg
6. U. Skiba

In Environmental Engineering

1. S. Medinets
2. K. Butterbach‐Bahl
3. G. Robertson
4. Peter M. Groffman
5. H. Rennenberg
6. U. Skiba

In Pollution

1. S. Medinets
2. K. Butterbach‐Bahl
3. G. Robertson
4. Peter M. Groffman
5. H. Rennenberg
6. U. Skiba

Citations in the corpus

• Chapter 14 – Nitrogen Transformations (2015, background): “Inference enzyme kinetics for the few available isolates suggest that archaeal and comammox nitrifiers are favored in soil microenvironments with very low NH 4 þ concentrations (Koch et al., 2019; Prosser and Nicol, 2012), which by inference will have very little NH 3 available to nitrifiers.”
• A review of soil NO transformation: associated processes and possible physiological significance on organisms (2015, background): “Considering these processes and 999 mechanisms, we hypothesize that not only nitrifying (AOB and AOA) 1000 microbes are responsible for soil NO production, but that also other 1001 microbes via the release of extracellular SOD (directly) or SOD (after cell 1002 damage) contribute to soil NO producti”
• Identifying response groups of soil nitrifiers and denitrifiers to grazing and associated soil environmental drivers in Tibetan alpine meadows (2014, background): “We also assumed that broad differences in the ecophysiology of AOA versus AOB (French et al., 2012; Prosser and Nicol, 2012) and nirS- versus nirKlike denitrifiers (Yan et al.”
• Nitrification gene ratio and free ammonia explain nitrite and nitrous oxide production in urea-amended soils (2017, background): “It is possible that AOA were important in producing N2O under these low-substrate conditions, where AOA have been found to be more competitive than AOB (Prosser and Nicol, 2012).”