Fighting climate change: soil bacteria communities and topography play a role in plant colonization of desert areas

Abstract

Summary Global warming has exacerbated desertification in arid regions. Exploring the environmental variables and microbial communities that drive the dynamics of geographic patterns of desert crops is important for large‐scale standardization of crops that can control desertification. Here, predictions based on future climate data from CMIP6 show that a steady expand in the suitable production areas for three desert plants (Cistanche deserticola, Cynomorium songaricum and Cistanche salsa) under global warming, demonstrating their high adaptability to future climate change. We examined the biogeography of three desert plant soil bacteria communities and assessed the environmental factors affecting the community assembly process. The α‐diversity significantly decreased along elevated latitudes, indicating that the soil bacterial communities of the three species have latitude diversity patterns. The neutral community model evaluated 66.6% of the explained variance of the bacterial community in the soil of desert plants and Modified Stochasticity Ratio <0.5, suggesting that deterministic processes dominate the assembly of bacterial communities in three desert plants. Moreover, topography (longitude, elevation) and precipitation as well as key OTUs (OTU4911: Streptomyces eurythermus and OTU4672: Streptomyces flaveus) drive the colonization of three desert plants. This research offers a promising solution for desert management in arid areas under global warming.

Structural mutations of small single copy (SSC) region in the plastid genomes of five Cistanche species and inter-species identification

“…There has been a debate whether or not C. deserticola and C. salsa should be considered two distinct species [ 27 , 35 ]. Previous work shows that C. salsa exhibited similar chemical composition and pharmacological activities to those of C. deserticola , and has been used as a local medicinal herb in Ningxia and Gansu province of China [ 36 – 38 ].…”

Environmental Response to Root Secondary Metabolite Accumulation in Paeonia lactiflora: Insights from Rhizosphere Metabolism and Root-Associated Microbial Communities

“…The modified stochastic ratio (MST), which was used for the relative importance of deterministic (MST < 0.5) and stochastic (MST > 0.5) processes, was computed by the NST package ( 91 ). The neutral community model (NCM), niche breadth calculations, and niche generalist and specialist divisions were performed according to our previous study ( 92 ).…”

“…In addition, the bipartite networks were also constructed based on the above-described method. According to previous methods ( 92 ), the nodes in the network were classified according to within-module connectivity ( Z i ) and among-module connectivity ( P i ): module hubs, peripherals, connectors, and network hubs. The relationship (the number of edges) between bacteria and bacteria, fungi and fungi, and bacteria and fungi was calculated according to previous studies ( 94 ).…”

Increasing precipitation weakened the negative effects of simulated warming on soil microbial community composition in a semi-arid sandy grassland

“…Global change, such as warming and precipitation fluctuation, directly and indirectly, alters vegetation ( Rupp et al, 2000 ; Walker et al, 2006 ; Del Grosso et al, 2008 ; Bjorkman et al, 2018 ) and soil microbiota ( Nottingham et al, 2019 ; Rillig et al, 2019 ; Brigham et al, 2021 ; Sun et al, 2021 ). As a consequence of increasing greenhouse gases due to land use change and fossil fuel consumption, global climate warming has been recorded worldwide ( IPCC, 2013 ), and global mean temperature is predicted to increase by 2–7°C at the end of this century.…”