Community diversity and abundance of ammonia‐oxidizing archaea and bacteria in shrimp pond sediment at different culture stages.

Aims: Ammonia oxidation is a significant process of nitrogen cycles in a lot of ecosystems sediments while there are few studies in shrimp culture pond (SCP) sediments. This paper attempted to explore the community diversity and abundance of ammonia‐oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia‐oxidizing bacteria (AOB) in SCP sediments at different culture stages. Methods and Results: We collected SCP sediments and analysed the community diversity and abundance of AOA and bacteria in shrimp pond sediment at different culture stages using the ammonia monooxygenase (amoA) gene with quantitative PCR (qPCR) and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The AOB‐amoA gene abundance was showed higher than AOA‐amoA gene abundance in SCP sediments on Day 50 and Day 60 after shrimp larvae introducing into the pond, and the diversity of AOA in SCP sediments was higher than that of AOB. The phylogenetic tree revealed that the most of AOA were the member of Nitrosopumilus and Nitrososphaera, and the majority of AOB sequences were clustered into Nitrosospira, Nitrosomonas clusters 6a and 7. The AOA community has close relationship with total organic carbon (TOC), pH, total phosphorus (TP), nitrate reductase, urease, acid phosphatase and β‐glucosidase. The AOB community was related to TOC, C/N and nitrate reductase. Conclusions: AOA and AOB play the different ecological roles in SCP sediments at different culture stages. Significance and Impact of the Study: Our results suggested that the different community diversity and abundance of AOA and AOB in SCP sediments, which may improve our ecological cognition of shrimp culture stages in SCP ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]