Alpine soil microbial community structure and diversity are largely influenced by moisture content in the Zoige wetland
2022
Fan, S. | Qin, J. | Sun, H. | Jia, Z. | Chen, Y.
The Zoige alpine wetland is one of the most sensitive ecosystems to global climate change. It is the largest alpine wetland in the world and currently suffers from serious drought and degradation. In this study, soil microbial communities of five soils with different moisture content were investigated by Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA. The results showed that soil acidity and the content of soil nutrients decreased with the decrease in soil moisture. The microbial richness indices (Chao1 and ACE) and diversity index (Shannon) were highest in the flooded wetland (FW) and lowest in the unflooded mound near the flooded wetland (UW). The relative abundance showed four dominated phyla among all the soil microbes in five soils: Proteobacteria (36.5%), Acidobacteria (26.1%), Actinobacteria (9.4%) and Bacteroidetes (5.8%). Moreover, Proteobacteria (51.4%) of UW was significantly (P < 0.05) higher than that of other soils, while Actinobacteria (1.6%), Gemmatimonadetes (0.9%) and Nitrospirae (0.03%) of UW were significantly (P < 0.05) lower than those of other soils. Principal component analysis (PCA) and redundancy analysis (RDA) revealed that soil samples of UW differed most from samples of other soils. Proteobacteria was positively correlated with water-soluble phosphorus, while Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes were negatively correlated with total organic carbon and total nitrogen. Our findings revealed that soils in transitional unstable state from flooded to aridification had the lowest microbial diversity, and drought led to long-term changes in the microbial community in the Zoige wetland, which may cause further degradation of alpine wetland ecosystem functions.
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