Rare soil bacteria are more responsive in desertification restoration than abundant bacteria

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international Vol. 29; no. 22; pp. 33323 - 33334
• Main Authors: Pan, Chengchen, Feng, Qi, Li, Yulin, Li, Yuqiang, Liu, Linde, Yu, Xiaoya, Ren, Shilong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.05.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aquatic Pollution; Assembly; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Bacteria; Changing environments; China; Conservation of Natural Resources; Desertification; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecological function; Ecosystem; Ecosystem recovery; Ecotoxicology; Environment; Environmental changes; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Health; Environmental science; Microorganisms; Network analysis; Plant species; Research Article; Restoration; Sandy soils; Soil; Soil bacteria; Soil Microbiology; Soil microorganisms; Soils; Species richness; Taxa; Vegetation; Vegetation effects; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; China; Bacteria; Abundant taxa; Rare taxa; Restoration; Dryland; Desertification
• ISSN: 0944-1344; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-021-16830-x

Soil microbes play key roles in ecosystem functions, especially in the recovery of ecosystems from disturbance, and exploring community assembly under changing environments has long been a central theme in microbial ecology. The response of abundant and rare bacteria in desertified land to restoration is still unclear. Here, we investigated the effects of vegetation restoration on the assemblage patterns of abundant and rare bacteria in soil across the four sandy lands (Hulunbeir, Horqin, Otindag, and Mu Us) in northern China. Our results revealed that abundant bacteria maintained a relatively stable state under restoration, whereas rare taxa were more responsive, indicating the higher resilience of the rare community to change. Our network analysis also showed that restoration promoted destabilizing properties in rare, but not in abundant, bacterial co-occurrence networks in soil. Environmental selection played a key role in abundant and rare community assembly under restoration. Of the two, the rare subcommunity was mainly affected by environmental filtering. The variations in the abundant and rare communities at the sampling sites under restoration were controlled mainly by plant species richness, and stronger effects were observed in the rare taxa. Overall, these results provide new insight into the mechanisms controlling bacterial community assembly in response to vegetation restoration.