Positive associations fuel soil biodiversity and ecological networks worldwide

10 páginas.- 4 figuras.- 60 referencias.- This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.2308769121/-/DCSupplemental.-- Copyright © 2024 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND)

Microbial interactions are key to maintaining soil biodiversity. However, whether negative or positive associations govern the soil microbial system at a global scale remains virtually unknown, limiting our understanding of how microbes interact to support soil biodiversity and functions. Here, we explored ecological networks among multitrophic soil organisms involving bacteria, protists, fungi, and invertebrates in a global soil survey across 20 regions of the planet and found that positive associations among both pairs and triads of soil taxa governed global soil microbial networks. We further revealed that soil networks with greater levels of positive associations supported larger soil biodiversity and resulted in lower network fragility to withstand potential perturbations of species losses. Our study provides unique evidence of the widespread positive associations between soil organisms and their crucial role in maintaining the multitrophic structure of soil biodiversity worldwide.

This work was funded by a Large Research Grant from the British Ecological Society (No. LRB17\1019; MUSGONET). H.C. was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFD1500202), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA28020202), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42230511, 92251305), and the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (STEP, 2019QZKK0503). M.D.-B. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation for the I+D+i project PID2020-115813RA-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. M.D.-B. was also supported by a project of the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) and the Consejería de Transformación Económica, Industria, Conocimiento y Universidades of the Junta de Andalucía (FEDER Andalucía 2014-2020 Objetivo temático “01—Refuerzo de la investigación, el desarrollo tecnológico y la innovación”) associated with the research project P20_00879 (ANDABIOMA). O.G. acknowledges financial support provided by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and by the European Social Fund through a Ramón y Cajal contract (RyC 2017-23666).

Peer reviewed