Abstract
BackgroundMangrove ecosystems are vulnerable due to the exotic Spartina alterniflora (S. alterniflora) invasion in China. However, little is known about mangrove sediment microbial community assembly processes and interactions under S. alterniflora invasion. Here, we investigated the assembly processes and co-occurrence networks of the archaeal and bacterial communities under S. alterniflora invasion along the coastlines of Fujian province, southeast China.ResultsAssembly of overall archaeal and bacterial communities was driven predominantly by stochastic processes, and the relative role of stochasticity was stronger for bacteria than archaea. Co-occurrence network analyses showed that the network structure of bacteria was more complex than that of the archaea. The keystone taxa often had low relative abundances (conditionally rare taxa), suggesting low abundance taxa may significantly contribute to network stability. Moreover, S. alterniflora invasion increased bacterial and archaeal drift process (part of stochastic processes), and improved archaeal network complexity and stability, but decreased the network complexity and stability of bacteria. This could be attributed to S. alterniflora invasion influenced microbial communities diversity and dispersal ability, as well as soil environmental conditions.ConclusionsThis study fills a gap in the community assembly and co-occurrence patterns of both archaea and bacteria in mangrove ecosystem under S. alterniflora invasion. Thereby provides new insights of the plant invasion on mangrove microbial biogeographic distribution and co-occurrence network patterns.
Highlights
Mangrove ecosystems are vulnerable due to the exotic Spartina alterniflora (S. alterniflora) invasion in China
This study fills a gap in the community assembly and co-occurrence patterns of both archaea and bacteria in mangrove ecosystem under S. alterniflora invasion
A total of 6836 archaeal and 31,639 bacterial operational taxonomic unit (OTU) were identified from 332,304 archaeal and 2,081,856 bacterial highquality sequences at 97% identity level, and all microbial taxa were divided into five categories
Summary
Mangrove ecosystems are vulnerable due to the exotic Spartina alterniflora (S. alterniflora) invasion in China. Little is known about mangrove sediment microbial community assembly processes and interactions under S. alterniflora invasion. Determining the mechanisms and processes controlling community diversity and biogeography across earth’s ecosystems is a central topic in microbial ecology [8, 9]. Niche-based and neutral-based theories constitute two important and complementary mechanisms for understanding microbial community assembly [10, 11]. Niche-based theory asserts that deterministic processes largely control the patterns of community structure. Deterministic processes involve nonrandom, niche-based mechanisms, including environmental filtering and various biological interactions (e.g., competition, facilitation, mutualisms, and predation) [12, 13]. Neutral theory assumes that all species or individuals are ecologically functionally equivalent, and species dynamics are controlled by stochastic processes [9, 10]. Disentangling the mangrove microbial ecological processes and interaction will promote our understanding of the mangroves ecological function
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