Skip to main content

High altitude, hyper-arid soils of the Central-Andes harbor mega-diverse communities of actinobacteria

Bull, Alan T., Idris, Hamidah, Sanderson, Roy, Asenjo, Juan, Andrews, Barbara, Goodfellow, Michael (2017) High altitude, hyper-arid soils of the Central-Andes harbor mega-diverse communities of actinobacteria. Extremophiles, 22 (1). pp. 47-57. ISSN 1431-0651. E-ISSN 1433-4909. (doi:10.1007/s00792-017-0976-5) (KAR id:64275)

Abstract

The data reported in this paper are among the first relating to the microbiology of hyper-arid, very high altitude deserts and they provide base line information on the structure of actinobacterial communities. The high mountain Cerro Chajnantor landscape of the Central Andes in northern Chile is exposed to the world’s most intense levels of solar radiation and its impoverished soils are severely desiccated. The purpose of this research was to define the actinobacterial community structures in soils at altitudes ranging from 3000 to 5000 m above sea level. Pyrosequencing surveys have revealed an extraordinary degree of microbial dark matter at these elevations that includes novel candidate actinobacterial classes, orders and families. Ultraviolet-B irradiance and a range of edaphic factors were found to be highly significant in determining community compositions at family and genus levels of diversity.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1007/s00792-017-0976-5
Uncontrolled keywords: High altitude, Hyper-arid soils, Actinobacteria, ?-Diversity, Microbial dark matter
Subjects: Q Science
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Natural Sciences > Biosciences
Depositing User: Susan Davies
Date Deposited: 06 Nov 2017 10:11 UTC
Last Modified: 10 Dec 2022 06:31 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/64275 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.