Effects of terrigenous organic substrates and additional phosphorus on bacterioplankton metabolism and exoenzyme stoichiometry
Authors: Yeh Tz‐Ching , Krennmayr Kathrin , Liao Chien‐Sen , Ejarque Elisabet , Schomakers Jasmin , Huang Jr‐Chuan , Zehetner Franz , Hein Thomas 
Published: July 2020

Bamboo, as a pioneer vegetation, often forms forests on bare lands after catastrophic landslides. Compared to evergreen forest soil, bamboo forest soil is much more labile, with a higher percentage of microbially derived organic carbon (OC), lower molecular weight, and lower humic acid content. We hypothesised that different terrigenous organic matter (tOM) sources with varying lability and phosphorus (P) availability select for bacterioplankton with distinct metabolic pathways.

We incubated natural bacterioplankton assemblages with tOM leached from bamboo forest soil (BOM) and evergreen forest soil (EOM) and compared these to a lake water control. To test if microbial metabolism would be limited by OC or P availability of each tOM treatment, we used acetate as an extra labile OC source and phosphate as an inorganic P source. Bacterial metabolism was measured by analysing respiration via O2 consumption and production via tritiated thymidine (TdR) assimilation.

Bacterioplankton metabolism is limited by the availability of P in BOM substrates. When using BOM, bacteria had higher enzymatic activities for phosphatase. The nutrients required for bacterial biomass seemed to be derived from organic matter. Under BOM treatment, bacterial production (BP) (0.92 ± 0.13 μg C L−1 hr−1) and cell specific TdR assimilation rates (0.015 ± 0.002 10–18 M TdR cell−1 hr−1) were low. Adding P enhanced BP (BOM+P 1.52 ± 0.31 and BOM+C+P 2.25 ± 0.37 μg C L−1 hr−1) while acetate addition had no significant effect on BOM treatment.

This indicated that the bacteria switched to using added inorganic P to respire a P‐limited BOM substrate, which increased total BP and abundance, resulting in even more active respiration and lower growth efficiency. We also found higher activities for chitin‐degrading enzyme β‐N‐acetylglucosaminidase, which is associated with N mining from aminosaccharides.

Microbes using EOM, however, did not change metabolic strategies with additional acetate or/and inorganic P. This is due to higher concentrations of organic P in EOM substrates and the presence of inorganic N in the EOM leachates an alternative nutrient source. Bacteria produced β‐glucosidase and leucyl‐aminopeptidase in order to utilise the humic substances, which sustained greater bacterial abundance, higher BP (2.64 ± 0.39 μg C L−1 hr−1), and lower cell‐specific respiration. This yielded a much higher bacterial growth efficiency (15 ± 9.2%) than the lake water control.

Our study demonstrated the aquatic metabolic discrepancy between tOM of different forest types. Bacterioplankton in BOM and EOM exhibit distinct metabolic responses. Bacterial metabolic strategy when using BOM implied that the supposedly stabilised biomass OM might be efficiently used by aquatic bacterioplankton. As the labile and nutrient‐deficient BOM is more susceptible to the influence of additional nutrients, fertiliser residues in bamboo forest catchments might have a stronger effect on aquatic bacterial metabolic pathways. Thus, it is important to take tOM differences into consideration when building models to estimate soil carbon turnover rates along a terrestrial–aquatic continuum.