Bacterial Communities in the Rhizospheres of Three Mangrove Tree Species from Beilun Estuary, China

The bacterial communities played important roles in the high productivity mangrove ecosystem. In this study, we investigated the vertical distributions of rhizosphere bacteria from three mangrove species (Bruguiera gymnorrhiza, Kandelia candel and Aegiceras corniculatum) in Beilun Estuary, China using high throughput DNA pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Phylogenetic analysis showed that bacterial communities from mangrove rhizosphere sediments were dominated by Proteobacteria (mostly Deltaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria), followed by Chloroflexi, Bacteroidetes, Planctomycetes and Acidobacteria. However, the ANOVA analysis on Shannon and Chao1 indices indicated that bacterial communities among sediments of the three mangrove species varied more strongly than the sampling depths. In addition, the PCA result demonstrated that the bacterial communities could be separated into three groups according to the mangrove species. Moreover, the dominated orders Rhodospirillales, GCA004 and envOPS12 were significantly different among sediments of the three mangrove species. The results of this study provided valuable information about the distribution feature of rhizosphere bacteria from Chinese mangrove plants and shed insights into biogeochemical transformations driven by bacteria in rhizosphere sediments.