Preliminary study on microbial communities in dripping waters of Heshang cave, Hubei Province, P.R. China

摘要

To investigate the microorganisms in dripping waters, their roles in the formation of calcite precipitation and their contribution to lipids trapped in stalagmites, systematic dripping water samples within the Heshang cave in Qingjiang of Hubei province in southern China were collected once every three months from February to November in 2006. Results showed that bacteria are the dominant community members.Traditional cultural methods and the Biolog microbial identification system were applied to bacterial counts and identification. It was found that the culturable bacteria vary greatly in numbers and the preponderant species varies with both the sampling location and, in particular, the sampling seasons. The season-dependent microbial distribution suggests that microbes and microbial lipids preserved in stalagmites have the great potential to reconstruct the paleoclimate.