STUDY OF PEAT SOIL MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES OF LOAGAN BUNUT NATIONAL PARK

摘要

Loagan Bunut National Park (LBNP) features a unique ecosystem which is covered by variety of forests including peat swamp forest. Tropical peat swamp forest is an important ecosystem for its role in carbon cycle but increasingly has become an endangered ecosystem. The study on diversity of tropical microbial in this ecosystem is limited, and none has reported on population of microbial communities in LBNP. In this study, metagenomic approach was used to study the microbial communities in the peat soil samples collected from LBNP. DNA from peat soil was extracted and 16S and 18S rRNA regions were amplified and cloned to produce a library of 100 colonies for each region. 16S sequences results showed that bacterial clone library consisted of a wide diversity of bacteria with Prosthecobacter species as major group (14%). Prosthecobacter has been known to be involved in carbohydrate degradation. As for the fungi community, 18S sequences result showed that 64.4% of the clones represented various uncultured fungi species, suggesting that there is a potential to discover new fungal species. A total of 15 fungal species with various biological roles has been identified. This study provides an insight to biodiversity of microbial communities and their possible roles in tropical peat soil of LBNP.