Variation in denitrifying bacterial communities along a primary succession in the Hailuogou Glacier retreat area, China

The Hailuogou Glacier is located at the Gongga Mountain on the southeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and has retreated continuously as a result of global warming. The retreat of the Hailuogou Glacier has left behind a primary succession along soil chronosequences. Hailuogou Glacier's retreated area provides an excellent living environment for the colonization of microbes and plants, making it an ideal model to explore plant successions, microbial communities, and the interaction of plants and microbes during the colonization process. However, to date, the density of the nitrogen cycling microbial communities remain unknown, especially for denitrifiers in the primary succession of the Hailuogou Glacier. Therefore, we investigated the structural succession and its driving factors for denitrifying bacterial communities during the four successional stages (0, 20, 40, and 60 years). The diversity, community composition, and abundance of -denitrifiers were determined using molecular tools, including terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism and quantitative polymerase chain reactions (qPCR). -denitrifiers were more abundant and diverse in soils from successional years 20-60 compared to 0-5 years, and was highest in Site3 (40 years). The denitrifying bacterial community composition was more complex in older soils (40-60 years) than in younger soils (≤20 years). The terminal restriction fragments (T-RFs) of (90 bp) and (95 bp) were dominant in soisl during early successional stages (0-20 years) and in the mature phase (40-60 years), respectively. Specific T-RFs of (100 bp) and (275 bp) were detected only in Site3 and Site4, respectively. Moreover, the unidentified 175 bp T-RFs was detected only in Site3. Of the abiotic factors that were measured in this study, soil available phosphorus, available potassium and denitrifying enzyme activity (DEA) correlated significantly with the community composition of -denitrifiers (