Abstract. Understanding the relationship between soil microbial taxonomic compositions and functional profiles is essential for predicting ecosystem functions under various environmental disturbances. However, even though microbial communities are sensitive to disturbance, ecosystem functions remain relatively stable, as soil microbes are likely to be functionally redundant. Microbial functional redundancy may be more associated with “broad” functions carried out by a wide range of microbes, than with “narrow” functions specialized by specific microorganisms. Thus, a comprehensive study to evaluate how microbial taxonomic compositions correlate with “broad” and “narrow” functional profiles is necessary. Here, we evaluated soil metagenomes worldwide to assess whether functional and taxonomic diversities differ significantly between the five “broad” and the five “narrow” functions that we chose. Our results revealed that compared with the five “broad” functions, soil microbes capable of performing the five “narrow” functions were more taxonomically diverse, and thus their functional diversity was more dependent on taxonomic diversity, implying lower levels of functional redundancy in “narrow” functions. Co-occurrence networks indicated that microorganisms conducting “broad” functions were positively related, but microbes specializing “narrow” functions were interacting mostly negatively. Our study provides strong evidence to support our hypothesis that functional redundancy is significantly different between “broad” and “narrow” functions in soil microbes, as the association of functional diversity with taxonomy were greater in the five “narrow” rather than the five “broad” functions.

中文翻译：

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在全球土壤宏基因组学中，“窄”功能的功能冗余低于“宽”功能

摘要。了解土壤微生物分类组成与功能概况之间的关系对于预测各种环境干扰下的生态系统功能至关重要。然而，即使微生物群落对干扰很敏感，生态系统功能仍然相对稳定，因为土壤微生物可能在功能上是多余的。微生物功能冗余可能更多地与由多种微生物执行的“广泛”功能相关，而不是与特定微生物特化的“狭义”功能相关。因此，有必要进行一项综合研究来评估微生物分类组成如何与“广泛”和“狭义”功能谱相关联。这里，我们评估了世界范围内的土壤宏基因组，以评估我们选择的五种“广义”和五种“狭义”功能之间的功能和分类多样性是否存在显着差异。我们的研究结果表明，与五种“宽”功能相比，能够发挥五种“窄”功能的土壤微生物在分类学上更加多样化，因此其功能多样性更依赖于分类多样性，这意味着“窄”功能冗余水平较低。 “ 职能。共现网络表明，执行“广泛”功能的微生物呈正相关，但专门从事“窄”功能的微生物主要是负相关。