The characteristics of soil microbial co-occurrence networks across a high-latitude forested wetland ecotone in China

Abstract

To understand the effect of seasonal variations on soil microbial communities in a forested wetland ecotone, here, we investigated the dynamics of the diversities and functions of both soil bacterial and fungal communities inhabiting three wetland types (forested wetland, shrub wetland and herbaceous vegetation wetland) from forest-wetland ecotone of northern Xiaoxing’an Mountains spanning different seasons. β-diversity of soil microbial communities varied significantly among different vegetation types (Betula platyphylla–Larix gmelinii, Alnus sibirica, Betula ovalifolia, and Carex schmidtii wetlands). We totally detected 34 fungal and 14 bacterial indicator taxa among distinctive groups by using Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis, and identified nine network hubs as the most important nodes detected in whole fungi, bacteria, and fungi–bacteria networks. At the vegetation type-level, bacterial and fungal microbiome living in C. schmidtii wetland soil possessed fewer positive interactions and lower modularity than those in other types of wetland soil. Furthermore, we also discovered that ectomycorrhizal fungi were dominant in the fungal microbiota existing in forested and shrub wetland soils, whereas arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were predominated in those residing in herbaceous vegetation wetland soil. The distribution of the predicted bacterial functional enzymes also obviously varied among different vegetation-types. In addition, the correlation analysis further revealed that the key fungal network modules were significantly affected by the contents of total N and soil water-soluble K, whereas most of the bacterial network modules were remarkably positively driven by the contents of total N, soil water-soluble K, Mg and Na. Our study suggested that vegetation type are substantive factors controlling the diversity, composition and functional group of soil microbiomes from forest-wetland ecotone of northern Xiaoxing’an Mountains.

Plant G x Microbial E: Plant genotype interaction with soil bacterial community shapes rhizosphere composition during invasion

“…This was the only family to be overrepresented on a genotype across both soil environments. The Micropepsaceae has been found to be an indicator taxon associated with specific plant species or site conditions in other studies (D. Wu et al 2023;Gschwend et al 2022). For studies that compared different environmental manipulations, the family was associated with early phases of restoration (grasslands; (Barber et al 2023)), early responses to agricultural planting (tobacco; (Cao et al 2022)), and response to cold treatments of plants (lettuce; (Persyn et al 2022)), all conditions in which a system had been perturbed recently.…”

“…Finally, two groups that are more common in invaded range soils could be of interest for their differential associations with each genotype growing in that soil inoculum. Taxa in the Armatimonadales (a group of putatively generalist consumers of organic compounds; (Kato et al 2022;Fickling et al 2024) have also been associated with invasions of Amaranthus palmeri in China (Zhang et al 2023), but were more abundant on native genotypes of C. solstitialis. In contrast, taxa in the Chthonomonadales (a group associated with decomposition of glycine substrates; (Bhatnagar, Peay, and Treseder 2018) were more abundant on invader genotypes.…”

Soil bacterial community in a photovoltaic system adopted different survival strategies to cope with small-scale light stress under different vegetation restoration modes

“…In the EP sample plot, there was only one connector hub belonging to Proteobacteria, while in the LC sample plot, there were three connector hubs, one belonging to Acidobacteriota and two belonging to Actinobacteriota. As keystone taxa, these hubs are crucial for maintaining the structure and functional integrity of the microbial community ( Wu et al, 2023 ). Additionally, there were 14 non-collector connectors in the EP sample plot, five of which belonged to Chloroflexi.…”