Response of soil microbial community structure and function to different altitudes in arid valley in Panzhihua, China

Abstract

Background Altitude affects biodiversity and physic-chemical properties of soil, providing natural sites for studying species distribution and the response of biota to environmental changes. We sampled soil at three altitudes in an arid valley, determined the physic-chemical characteristics and microbial community composition in the soils, identified differentially abundant taxa and the relationships between community composition and environmental factors. Results The low, medium and high altitudes were roughly separated based on the physic-chemical characteristics and clearly separated based on the microbial community composition. The differences in community composition were associated with differences in soil pH, temperature, and SOC, moisture, TN, TP, AN, AP and SMBC contents. The contents of organic and microbial biomass C, total and available N and available P, and the richness and diversity of the microbial communities were lowest in the medium altitude. The relative abundances of phyla Proteobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, Actinobacteria and Acidobacteria were high at all altitudes. The differentially abundant amplified sequence variants (ASVs) were mostly assigned to Proteobacteria and Acidobacteria. The highest number of ASVs characterizing altitude were detected in the high altitude. However, the predicted functions of the communities were overlapping, suggesting that the contribution of the communities to soil processes changed relatively little along the altitude gradient. Conclusions The low, medium and high altitudes were roughly separated based on the physicochemical characteristics and clearly separated based on the microbial community composition. The differences in community composition were associated with differences in soil pH, temperature, and SOC, moisture, TN, TP, AN, AP and SMBC contents.

Diversity of endophytic bacterial and fungal microbiota associated with the medicinal lichen Usnea longissima at high altitudes

“…Frontiers in Microbiology 09 frontiersin.org and U4 from middle altitudes. Our results agree with those recently reported (Zhang et al, 2022), which found that the microbial community composition of the soil at the middle altitude showed the lowest microbial diversity. It was proposed that this may be caused by altitude or lack of nutrients in the habitat (Wang et al, 2016).…”

“…In our study, all the samples were from the same lichen, so the influence of lichen species can be excluded. Therefore, it is likely that U2 geographical environment causes its unique endophytic microbial community structure, such as pH, temperature, and nutrient elements (Zhang et al, 2022). Moreover, the fungal microbial community structure of U3 was also unique, although this feature was not found in the bacterial community (Figure 5).…”

The diversity and abundance of bacterial and fungal communities in the rhizosphere of Cathaya argyrophylla are affected by soil physicochemical properties

“…Our results suggest that the diversity of bacterial and fungal communities may be more affected by changes in the soil environment. Previous research has demonstrated that soil nutrients are a critical factor influencing microbial communities ( Bayranvand et al, 2021 ; Cheng et al, 2022 ; Xie et al, 2023 ), and that soil nutrients can be influenced by altitude, climate, and vegetation ( Hirao et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ).”…”

Membrane lipid adaptation of soil Bacteroidetes isolates to temperature and pH

“…This implies that the relatedness to a different genus cannot alone explain the observed trends, suggesting that even within a genus two strains could respond differently to environmental changes (e.g., strains B and C). Altitude was shown to affect physicochemical characteristics and microbial diversity in soils ( Zhang et al, 2022 ). Therefore, as the strains investigated in the present study were isolated from three soils collected at different altitudes in the French Alps, it cannot be excluded that the specific variations in 3-OH FA relative abundances may at least partly reflect an intrinsic adaptation of each bacterial strain to the habitat it was isolated from.…”