Effect of different rice transplanting patterns on microbial community in water, sediment, and Procambarus clarkii intestine in rice-crayfish system

Although the microbial ecology of integrated rice-crayfish farming systems is receiving increasing attention with the expanding application area in China, the effects of rice transplanting patterns on the microbial community of water, sediment and Procambarus clarkii intestine in rice-crayfish system has yet to be determined. This study explored the microbial community present in water, sediment and intestine samples from three transplant patterns (rice crayfish with wide-narrow row transplanting, rice-crayfish with normal transplanting and pond-crayfish, abbreviated as RC-W, RC, and PC, respectively) using high-throughput sequencing. The results showed that the dominant microbial taxa from sediment, surrounding water, and intestine at phylum level were Proteobacteria, Chloroflexi, Cyanobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes. The patterns of rice transplanting had significant effects on microbial biodiversity and species composition in surrounding water. The OTUs community richness of water under RC group was significantly higher than that of PC group and RC-W group. The OTU relative abundance of top 10 operational taxonomic units had significantly different ( p