Microbial Diversity in Hydrate-bearing and -free Seafloor Surface Sediments in the Shenhu Area, South China Sea

Abstract:

In 2007, the China's first gas hydrate drilling expedition GMGS-1 in the Shenhu area on the northern continental slope of the South China Sea was performed (Zhang et al., 2007). Six holes (namely Sites SH1B, SH2B, SH3B, SH5B, SH5C and SH7B) were drilled, and gas hydrate samples were recovered at three sites: Sites SH2B, SH3B and SH7B. In order to investigate microbial diversity and community features in correlation to gas hydrate-bearing sediments, a study on microbial diversity in the surface sediments at hydrate-bearing sites (SH3B and SH7B) and -free sites (SH1B, SH5B, SH5C) was carried out by using 16S rRNA gene phylogenetic analysis. The phylogenetic results indicated difference in microbial communities between hydrate-bearing and -free sediments. At the gas hydrate-bearing sites, bacterial communities were dominated by Deltaproteobacteria (30.5%), and archaeal communities were dominated by Miscellaneous Crenarchaeotic Group (33.8%); In contrast, Planctomycetes was the major group (43.9%) in bacterial communities, while Marine Benthic Group-D (MBG-D) (32.4%) took up the largest proportion in the archaeal communities. Moreover, the microbial communities have characteristics different from those in other hydrate-related sediments around the world, indicating that the presence of hydrates could affect the microbial distribution and community composition. In addition, the microbial community composition in the studied sediments has its own uniqueness, which may be resulted by co-effect of geochemical characteristics and presence/absence of gas hydrates.