Divergent Co-occurrence patterns and assembly processes structure the abundant and rare bacterial communities in a salt marsh ecosystem

Shicong Du, Francisco Dini-Andreote, Nan Zhang, Chunling Liang, Zhiyuan Yao, Huajun Zhang, Demin Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

88 Scopus citations

Abstract

Understanding how species interaction and assembly processes structure the abundant and rare bacterial biospheres in soils is crucial for predicting how biodiversity influences ecosystem functioning. Here, we profiled the bacterial communities across a salt marsh ecosystem gradient to investigate the co-occurrence patterns across taxa and the relative influence of ecological processes mediating the assembly of the abundant and rare biospheres in soil. Our results revealed abundant taxa to be ubiquitous across all sites, whereas the distributions of the rare taxa were relatively more site specific. The β-diversity indices and-diversity of rare subcommunities were significantly higher than those of the abundant subcommunities. Besides, both the taxonomic and functional composition of soil bacterial communities differed significantly between the two biospheres. Furthermore, the influence of stochasticity differed in each subcommunity. In particular, stochastic processes were relatively more important in constraining the assembly of rare taxa. Co-occurrence network analysis revealed that a few abundant taxa occupy central nodes within the networks, possibly indicating crucial roles as keystone taxa. Collectively, these findings suggest that abundant and rare bacterial biospheres have distinct distributions underpinned by a dynamic interplay of ecological processes and taxon cooccurrence patterns.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbere00322-20
JournalApplied and environmental microbiology
Volume86
Issue number13
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 1 2020

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Biotechnology
  • Food Science
  • Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
  • Ecology

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Divergent Co-occurrence patterns and assembly processes structure the abundant and rare bacterial communities in a salt marsh ecosystem'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this