Abstract
Biological diversity plays an important role in the stability of ecosystems. The Mu Us Desert (MUD), located in Northern China, is an aeolian desert. Although it has been governed by a series of ecological restoration programs, the MUD still has limited biological diversity. Populus euphratica (P. euphratica), a xerophytic plant, has great potential to improve the biological diversity of the MUD. However, the survival rate of P. euphratica in the MUD has been very low. The current study tried to explore the mechanism of the high death rate of P. euphratica in the microbiome perspective. The correlation study between soil community composition and soil properties showed that water-filled pore space (WFPS), pH, EC, AP, NO3–, and NH4+ possess higher potential to change the bacterial community (18%) than the fungal community (9%). Principal coordinate analysis indicated that the composition of both bacteria (Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes) and fungi (Ascomycota) in the root soil can be increased by P. euphratica. By systematically comparing between the fungal diversity in the root soil around P. euphratica and the pathogenic fungus extract from the pathogenic site of P. euphratica, we found that the high death rate of P. euphratica was associated with specific pathogenic fungus Alternaria alternate and Didymella glomerata. In addition, the microbiome composition analysis indicated that P. euphratica planting could also influence the portions of bacteria community, which also has great potential to lead to future infection. However, as the extraction and separation of bacteria from plants is challenging, the correlation between pathogenic bacteria and the high death rate of P. euphratica was not studied here and could be explored in future work.
Highlights
The Mu Us Desert (MUD) was once covered by 81 km2 of sand dunes
According to the results of the correlation analysis, the influence of pH mainly affected Massilia and Rhodococcus, EC had a higher influence on Devosia; and NO3− on Candidatus nitrososphaera
The composition of soil microbiomes can be influenced by multiple environmental factors, and further interactions between pathogens and plants face the same situation (Xu et al, 2015; Wei et al, 2019)
Summary
The Mu Us Desert (MUD) was once covered by 81 km of sand dunes. after the efforts of several generations, its ecological environment has been greatly improved. The achievement of environmental management in the MUD is mainly attributed to the introduction of two kinds of plants: conifer pine and shrub It is difficult for other conventional green plants to survive in the MUD due to the natural climate, and as a result, most of the restored areas were dominated by these two kinds of plants. Proliferation of these species temporarily controlled the spread of the local desert and improved the local vegetation coverage, the limited biodiversity in the region renders the ecological environment fragile. The resulting risk of secondary desertification has always been an urgent problem for the ecological stability of the MUD region (Shu et al, 2018; Li et al, 2019)
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