Land Use Influences Antibiotic Resistance in the Microbiome of Soil Collembolans Orchesellides sinensis

Abstract

Numerous studies have investigated the composition and diversity of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in multiple environments but the pattern of ARGs in field-collected soil fauna remains poorly understood. In the present study soil collembolans were collected from six sites with three different land use types (parkway land, park land, and arable land) and 285 ARGs and 10 mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in the microbiome of these "wild" collembolans were quantified by high-throughput quantitative PCR. A total of 76 unique ARGs and 5 MGEs were detected. There were significant differences between collection sites in the antibiotic resistome in the collembolans. Land use significantly altered the distribution patterns of collembolan ARGs. Thirty shared ARGs and three shared MGEs were identified. The co-occurrences of shared resistomes were largely random, and more positive relationships were found in the coassociation network. Partial redundancy analysis confirms that the changes in bacterial communities explained 27.77% of the variation in ARGs. These findings suggest that resistance genes are pervasive in the microbiome associated with the field collembolan and the activity of the collembolans may contribute to the spread and dissemination of resistance genes in the environment, an aspect of ARGs that has until now been largely overlooked.