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Habitats Are More Important Than Seasons in Shaping Soil Bacterial Communities on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

ABSTRACT: Both habitats and seasons can determine the dynamics of microbial communities, but the relative importance of different habitats and seasonal changes in shaping the soil bacterial community structures on a small spatial scale in permafrost areas remains controversial. In this study, we explored the relative effect of four typical alpine meadow habitats (swamp wetland, swamp meadow, meadow and mature meadow) versus seasons on soil bacterial communities based on samples from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in four months (March, May, July and September). The results showed that habitats, rather than seasons explained more variation of soil bacterial composition and structure. Environmental cofactors explained the greatest proportion of bacterial variation observed and can help elucidate the driving force of seasonal changes and habitats on bacterial communities. Soil temperature played the most important role in shaping bacterial beta diversities, followed by soil total nitrogen and pH. A group of microbial biomarkers, used as indicators of different months, were identified using random forest modeling, and for which relative abundance was shaped by different environmental factors. Furthermore, seasonality in bacterial co-occurrence patterns was observed. The data showed that co-occurrence relationships changed over months. The inter-taxa connections in May and July were more pronounced than that in March and September. Bryobacter, a genus of subgroup_22 affiliated to Acidobacteria, and Pseudonocardia belonging to Actinobacteria were observed as the keystone taxa in different months in the network. These results demonstrate that the bacterial community was clustered according to the seasonal mechanism, whereas the co-occurrence relationships changed over months, which indicated complex bacterial dynamics in a permafrost grassland on the eastern edge of Qinghai-Tibetan.

SUBMITTER: Wang R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8400953 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BACKGROUND: GeoChip 3.0, a microbial functional gene array, containing ~28,000 oligonucleotide probes and targeting ~57,000 sequences from 292 functional gene families, provided a powerful tool for researching microbial community structure in natural environments. The alpine meadow is a dominant plant community in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, hence it is important to profile the unique geographical flora and assess the response of the microbial communities to environmental variables. In this study, Geochip 3.0 was employed to understand the microbial functional gene diversity and structure, and metabolic potential and the major environmental factors in shaping microbial communities structure of alpine meadow soil in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. RESULTS: A total of 6143 microbial functional genes involved in carbon degradation, carbon fixation, methane oxidation and production, nitrogen cycling, phosphorus utilization, sulphur cycling, organic remediation, metal resistance, energy process and other category were detected in six soil samples and high diversity was observed. Interestingly, most of the detected genes associated with carbon degradation were derived from cultivated organisms. To identify major environmental factors in shaping microbial communities, Mantel test and CCA Statistical analyses were performed. The results indicated that altitude, C/N, pH and soil organic carbon were significantly (P < 0.05) correlated with the microbial functional structure and a total of 80.97% of the variation was significantly explained by altitude, C/N and pH. The C/N contributed 38.2% to microbial functional gene variation, which is in accordance with the hierarchical clustering of overall microbial functional genes. CONCLUSIONS: High overall functional genes and phylogenetic diversity of the alpine meadow soil microbial communities existed in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Most of the genes involved in carbon degradation were derived from characterized microbial groups. Microbial composition and structures variation were significantly impacted by local environmental conditions, and soil C/N is the most important factor to impact the microbial structure in alpine meadow in Qinghai-Tibetan plateau.

Project description:The relative importance of spatial and temporal variability in shaping the distribution of soil microbial communities at a large spatial scale remains poorly understood. Here, we explored the relative importance of space versus time when predicting the distribution of soil bacterial and fungal communities across North China Plain in two contrasting seasons (summer versus winter). Although we found that microbial alpha (number of phylotypes) and beta (changes in community composition) diversities differed significantly between summer and winter, space rather than season explained more of the spatiotemporal variation of soil microbial alpha and beta diversities. Environmental covariates explained some of microbial spatiotemporal variation observed, with fast-changing environmental covariates-climate variables, soil moisture, and available nutrient-likely being the main factors that drove the seasonal variation found in bacterial and fungal beta diversities. Using random forest modeling, we further identified a group of microbial exact sequence variants (ESVs) as indicators of summer and winter seasons and for which relative abundance was associated with fast-changing environmental variables (e.g., soil moisture and dissolved organic nitrogen). Together, our empirical field study's results suggest soil microbial seasonal variation could arise from the changes of fast-changing environmental variables, thus providing integral support to the large emerging body of snapshot studies related to microbial biogeography.IMPORTANCE Both space and time are key factors that regulate microbial community, but microbial temporal variation is often ignored at a large spatial scale. In this study, we compared spatial and seasonal effects on bacterial and fungal diversity variation across an 878-km transect and found direct evidence that space is far more important than season in regulating the soil microbial community. Partitioning the effect of season, space and environmental variables on microbial community, we further found that fast-changing environmental factors contributed to microbial temporal variation.

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Habitats Are More Important Than Seasons in Shaping Soil Bacterial Communities on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

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