Table 2.

Diversity and abundance of nitrifying archaea and bacteria in sediments from vegetated and bare sites

	Vegetated sites (N = 20)	Bare sites (N = 15)	All sites (N = 35)
Chao1 diversity
AOA	10.47 ± 8.92b	8.77 ± 7.36b	9.65 ± 8.12b
AOB	19.89 ± 12.18a	19.76 ± 16.22a	19.84 ± 13.83a
Shannon diversity
AOA	1.31 ± 0.73	1.08 ± 0.49	1.20 ± 0.63
AOB	1.42 ± 0.66	1.51 ± 0.75	1.46 ± 0.69
Simpson diversity
AOA	0.40 ± 0.27	0.47 ± 0.23	0.44 ± 0.25
AOB	0.41 ± 0.22	0.38 ± 0.26	0.40 ± 0.23
Abundance (104 copies g−1)
AOA	1.60 ± 1.36b	29.19 ± 86.27b	13.43 ± 57.07b
AOB	0.84 ± 0.70a	2.06 ± 2.83a	1.36 ± 19.99a
Abundance ratio
AOA/AOB	2.79 ± 3.68	5.14 ± 8.32	3.79 ± 6.12

There was no significant difference in diversity and abundance of AOA and AOB between vegetated and bare sites. Mean ± standard deviation followed by different letters in the same column indicate significant difference (P < 0.05) between AOA and AOB