The Effect of Lanthanum on the Composition of Methanotrophic Community of Sod-Podzolic Soil

— While lanthanum is known to regulate the metabolism of microorganisms using single-carbon compounds, there is no information about its effect on soil communities. This is the first report on response of methanotrophic communities to the introduction of lanthanum, determined using high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA genes in experiments with soil microcosms. It was found that after one and two months after the introduction of lanthanum salts the proportion of Methylobacter in the total pool of sequences increased (up to 9 and 15%, respectively). At the same time, the content of methylotrophic Methylotenera increased up to 10 and 19%, respectively. Thus, lanthanum was found to stimulate the formation of Methylobacter − Methylotenera associations under elevated methane content in the soil, which may affect the contribution of agrosoils to the regulation of methane content in the atmosphere.