Nutrient-cycling functional gene diversity mirrors phosphorus transformation during chicken manure composting

Abstract

Elucidating ecological mechanism underlying phosphorus transformation mediated by phosphate-solubilizing bacteria (PSB) during manure composting is an important but rarely investigated subject. The research objective is to disentangle ecological functions of the inoculation of PSB Pseudomonas sp. WWJ-22 during chicken manure composting based on gene quantification and amplicon sequencing. There are large dynamic changes in phosphorus fractions, gene abundances, and bacterial community structure. The PSB addition notably increased available phosphorus from 0.29–0.89 g kg−1 to 0.49–1.39 g kg−1 and significantly affected phosphorus fractionation. The PSB inoculation significantly affected composition of nutrient-cycling functional genes (NCFGs), and notably influenced bacterial community composition and function. Compost bacteria showed significant phylogenetic signals in response to phosphorus fractions, and stochastic processes dominated bacterial community assembly. Results emphasized that PSB addition increased functional redundancy, phylogenetic conservatism, and stochasticity-dominated assembly of bacterial community. Overall, findings highlight NCFG diversity can be a bio-indicator to mirror phosphorus transformation.