Abstract

ETTO, R. M. et al. Prokaryotic communities of acidic peatlands from the southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Braz. J. Microbiol. [online]. 2012, vol.43, n.2, pp. 661-674. ISSN 1517-8382.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1517-83822012000200031.

The acidic peatlands of southern Brazil are ecosystems essential for the maintenance of the Atlantic Forest, one of the 25 hot-spots of biodiversity in the world. In this work, we investigated the composition of prokaryotic communities in four histosols of three acidic peatland regions by constructing small-subunit (SSU) rRNA gene libraries and sequencing. SSU rRNA gene sequence analysis showed the prevalence of Acidobacteria (38.8%) and Proteobacteria (27.4%) of the Bacteria domain and Miscellaneous (58%) and Terrestrial (24%) groups of Crenarchaeota of the Archaea domain. As observed in other ecosystems, archaeal communities showed lower richness than bacterial communities. We also found a limited number of Euryarchaeota and of known methanotrophic bacteria in the clone libraries.

Keywords : acidic peatland; prokaryotic communities; SSU rRNA gene; microbial ecology.