Archaea, like the bacterial communities are gradually being realized as key players in the biogeochemical progress of water ecosystems. In this study, tilapia aquaculture ponds were used for an in-depth understanding of archaeal community compositions in water and surface sediment. Some of the main functions, as well as the communities' response patterns, to time variations, pond differences and some physio-chemical parameters were investigated. The results revealed the dominant phylum in both the water and surface sediment, as Euryarchaeota, while, the most abundant classes were: Halobacteria and Methanomicrobia respectively. Significant differences in the archaeal community compositions in the water and surface sediment, were observed in the early stages of cultivation, which became minimal at the later stage of the GIFT tilapia cultivation. Additionally to the differences in the most abundant classes, more OTUs were observed in water samples than in surface sediment samples. The methane generation could be attributed to the large proportion of methanogens found in both pond water and in the surface sediment. Furthermore, the archaeal community compositions in water and the surface sediment were shaped mainly by temporal variations and pond differences respectively. In the pond water, the archaeal community compositions were highly co-related to the concentration changes of ammonia, sulfate and total nitrogen; while in the surface sediment, the correlation to the content changes was significant in total phosphorus. The archaeal community compositions in surface sediment should be considered as an indicator for future environmental capacity studies in aquaculture.
Keywords: Archaeal community; Illumina high-throughput sequencing; Influencing factors; Tilapia pond.