Figure 4.

Structure of the archaeal community involved in the biomethanation process of (A) maize silage and (B) sugar beet silage. Shown is the relative abundance of the detected terminal restriction fragments (TRFs) as a function of the percental fluorescence intensity of each individual TRF in relation to the total fluorescence intensity. Coloured bars symbolize TRFs in base pairs (bp), which were identified by 16S rRNA gene sequence libraries. Each sampling point is given as median value of three biological replicates (i.e. parallel-operated biogas reactors) and three technical replicates (i.e. three DNA extracts per reactor). Numbers in sampling point descriptors indicate duration of continuous fermentation in days.