Authors: Martin Denecke Sascha Eilmus Nadine Röder Christopher Roesch Hermann Bothe
Publish Date: 2011/07/24
Volume: 93, Issue: 4, Pages: 1725-1734
Abstract
The diversity of the microbial community was identified in two labscale ideally mixed sequencing batch reactors which were run for 115 days One of the reactors was intermittently aerated 2 h aerobically/2 h anaerobically whereas the other was consistently aerated The amount of biomass as dry matter the degradation of organic carbon determined by chemical oxygen demand and nitrogendegradation activity were followed over the operation of the two reactors and did not show significant differences between the two approaches at the end of the experiment At this point the composition of the microbial community was determined by a terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism approach using multiple restriction enzymes by which organisms were retrieved to the lowest taxonomic level The microbial composition was then significantly different The species richness was at least fivefold higher in the intermittently aerated reactor than in the permanently kept aerobic approach which is in line with the observation that ecosystem disturbances result in higher diversity
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