Response of Soil Archaeal Community to Heavy Metal Pollution in Different Typical Regions

Abstract

Soil archaeal communities play an essential role in the biogeochemical cycles of agricultural ecosystems. However, the response and mechanisms of soil archaeal community structure and assembly processes to heavy metal pollution remain poorly understood. This study examined the archaeal community composition and assembly process and their relationships with environmental factors in arable soils around high geological background areas, metal enterprises, and mining areas, based on high-throughput sequencing. The arable soils within the study area exhibited high spatial heterogeneity of heavy metal content, as well as severe cadmium pollution. The ecological risk levels were high in some soil samples from mining areas, but low to moderate in other soil samples. Crenarchaeota (62.7%-98.3%) was the dominant phyla in all soil samples, followed by Halobacterota (1.1%-23.2%). The pH, organic matter, arsenic, and lead contents of the soil were significantly correlated with the archaeal community (P<0.05), making them the main driving factors of archaeal community structure. The null-model analysis showed that the assembly process of the archaeal community was mainly influenced by heterogeneous processes, including heterogeneous selection (deterministic process) and dispersal limitation (stochastic process). Heterogeneous selection played a vital role in our study areas, while homogeneous selection only occurred in samples around the metal enterprises. Therefore, environmental selection was the ultimate driver of the archaeal community assembly process in this study, and its relative importance varied according to habitat type. Environmental heterogeneity increased the contribution of heterogeneous selection to community assembly, thus enhancing the community's resistance to environmental stress, and contributing to the stability and sustainability of the agricultural ecosystem.