Drivers and assemblies of soil eukaryotic microbes among different soil habitat types in a semi-arid mountain in China

Abstract

The effects of environmental and species structure on soil eukaryotic microbes inhabiting semi-arid mountains remain unclear. Furthermore, whether community assembly differs in a variety of soil habitat types, for example, artificial forest, artificial bush, farmland, and natural grassland, is not well understood. Here, we explored species diversity and composition of soil eukaryotic microbes south of the Taihang Mountains (mid-western region of China) using Illumina sequencing of the 18S rRNA gene (V4) region on the MiSeq platform. The results suggest that the forest soil habitat type improved the diversity and abundance of soil eukaryotic microbes that will benefit the restoration of degraded soil. The SAR (Stramenopiles, Alveolates, Rhizaria) supergroup and Metazoa were the dominant soil eukaryotic microbial groups at the phylum level. About 26% of all operational taxonomic units were common among the different soil habitat types. The O-elements, water content, soil organic matter, and elevation significantly influenced the abundance of soil eukaryote communities (P < 0.05). Our findings provide some reference for the effectiveness of local ecological restoration and the establishment of a soil eukaryotic microbe resource databases in a semi-arid area.

Contrasting Responses of Protistan Plant Parasites and Phagotrophs to Ecosystems, Land Management and Soil Properties

“…The main driver shaping the cercozoan and endomyxan communities was the ecosystem, with striking differences between grassland and forest sites in terms of alpha-and beta-diversity, as shown by Shannon index, evenness, principal component analysis and variance partitioning ( Supplementary Figure S3 and Figure 3). Similar to our results, a higher richness in forests compared to grasslands and/or agricultural fields and shrublands was reported for protists (albeit not for Cercozoa) (Ferreira de Araujo et al, 2018) and microbial eukaryotes in general (Zhao et al, 2018). A similar trend was observed in the Biodiversity Exploratories for bacteria (Nacke et al, 2001;Foesel et al, 2014;Kaiser et al, 2016) and fungi, both arbuscular mycorrhizal and saprophytic (Birkhofer et al, 2012).…”

Different community compositions between obligate and facultative oomycete plant parasites in a landscape-scale metabarcoding survey

“…Forest developmental stage was estimated by the mean of the diameter of 100 trunks of welldeveloped trees of the dominant species 2019). In this study and ours, Oomycetes do not follow the general pattern of soil microbes, that is a higher richness in forest compared to grassland, as it has been reported for bacteria and fungi in the Biodiversity Exploratories (Birkhofer et al 2012;Foesel et al 2014;Kaiser et al 2016;Nacke et al 2001) and for protists (Ferreira de Araujo et al 2018;Zhao et al 2018). In particular, in the same sites of the Biodiversity Exploratories, Cercozoa and Endomyxa were more diverse and more evenly distributed in forest than in grassland, except for the endomyxan plant parasites, which were absent from forest (Fiore-Donno et al 2020).…”

Comparison of soil bacterial community and functional characteristics following afforestation in the semi-arid areas

“…And these effects of afforestation on the microorganisms have been modulated by changes in soil chemical characteristics (Wu et al, 2019). Moreover, the forest soil habitat is an efficient means to restore local vegetation and studying this area can shed new light on the distribution of local soil eukaryotic microorganisms in semi-arid areas (Zhao et al, 2018).…”