Responses of soil fungal and archaeal communities to environmental factors in an ongoing antimony mine area

Abstract

Microorganisms are vital to biogeochemical cycles. However, heavy metal contamination has been implicated in altering the microbial community. Antimony (Sb) and arsenic (As) in soils can alter soil bacterial community composition in previous studies and, therefore, may have effects on soil fungal and archaeal community composition. The aim of this study was to assess the microbial activity and fungal and archaeal community composition in long-term Sb and As contamination areas. We analyzed soil respiration rates from 247.91 μg C/kg SDW h to 1372.93 μg C/kg SDW h, which revealed a positive correlation with concentrations of antimony (r = 0.79). The microbial diversity indices (Shannon and Simpson indices) showed that the abundances of the fungal and archaeal communities were more sensitive to As. Redundancy analysis (RDA) revealed that soil properties and contamination are drivers controlling the fungal and archaeal community. All of these two microbial groups responded strongly to pH. However, the dominant drivers for fungal and archaeal community composition were very different. These differences were related to limiting conditions for different species, with fungal community composition affected strongly by pH, TC, TSb, RI and SbDGT, while archaeal community composition was mainly affected by the pH, AsDGT and TAs. Furthermore, soil respiration showed a very strong relationship with fungal community composition with r2 = 0,60, p < 0.01. These results showed that microbial responses to contamination gradients of Sb and As were heterogeneous due to the limiting environmental conditions of different microbial taxa.