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Functional community composition has less environmental variability than taxonomic composition in straw-degrading bacteria

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Abstract

To address environmental variations in metabolic composition of straw-decomposing bacterial community, we performed a 16-week field-based buried straw experiment at three experimental sites across subtropical China. We found that, although the taxonomic composition was highly variable, the functional composition was conserved across all experimental sites. This was likely because stochastic dispersal limitation governed the high taxonomic turnover of the community, leading to high environmental variability, whereas metabolic niche selection resulted in stable functional composition and lower redundancy. The integrated knowledge on the response of functional and taxonomic composition to environmental variability might help to understand microbial-driven straw decomposition at a large scale, considering the significance of microbial functional and taxonomic composition to biogeochemical cycling.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Nos., 41430859, 41671267, and 41771294), National Key R&D Program (2016YFD0200306 and 2019YFC1520700), the CAS Strategic Priority Research Program (Project No., KFZD-SW-112-03-04), and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS (Member No., 2014271).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, People’s Republic of China

    Yuanyuan Bao, Zhiying Guo, Ruirui Chen, Meng Wu, Zhongpei Li, Xiangui Lin & Youzhi Feng

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

    Yuanyuan Bao & Zhiying Guo

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  1. Yuanyuan Bao
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  2. Zhiying Guo
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  3. Ruirui Chen
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  4. Meng Wu
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  5. Zhongpei Li
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  6. Xiangui Lin
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  7. Youzhi Feng
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Correspondence to Youzhi Feng.

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Bao, Y., Guo, Z., Chen, R. et al. Functional community composition has less environmental variability than taxonomic composition in straw-degrading bacteria. Biol Fertil Soils 56, 869–874 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-020-01455-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-020-01455-y

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