Variation of Archaeal Populations Along a Salinity Gradient in the Pearl River Estuary, China: Implications for Synergy Between Different Metabolic Processes

Marine archaea mainly include marine group I (MGI) that function as chemolithoautotrophs growing on ammonia and marine group II (MGII) that live heterotrophically. In this study, we quantified the abundance of MGI (represented by archaeal amoA gene) and MGII (16S rRNA gene) using qPCR in the water column of different salinities (A: 0.8‰; B: 18.1‰; C: 23.9‰: D: 31‰) in the Pearl River Estuary over a 12-month period. The results showed that the abundance of MG II in site C (8.5±10.1×10⁷ copies/L) was significantly higher than the other three sites (A: 3.5±8.8×10⁵ copies/L; B: 2.7±4.5×10⁷ copies/L; D: 2.2±4.4×10⁷ copies/L) in all seasons, indicating the perennial blooming of MGII that might be due to the optimal combination of available organic carbon and salinity at this site. We also observed that the correlation between MGI and MGII became better toward the marine water and was significant at site D (R²: A, 0.06; B, 0.1; C, 0.24; D, 0.64), indicating the potential functional relationship between them with increasing salinity. This allows us to hypothesize that the growth of MGI in the coastal site is more dependent on release of ammonia from organic matter degradation by MGII and other heterotrophic organisms. The Pearl River Estuary may be an ideal environment for testing this hypothesis, which may provide insight into the mechanisms of carbon cycle performed by different archaea in continental margin systems.