Functional redundancy buffers the effect of poly-extreme environmental conditions on southern African dryland soil microbial communities

作者：Tomás Sauma-Sánchez, Jaime Alcorta, Javier Tamayo-Leiva, Beatriz Dı́ez, Hugo Bezuidenhout, Don A. Cowan, Jean‐Baptiste Ramond · 发表于：FEMS Microbiology Ecology · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1093/femsec/fiae157 · 被引用次数：15 · 研究领域：Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology、Mycorrhizal Fungi and Plant Interactions、Gut microbiota and health

Drylands' poly-extreme conditions limit edaphic microbial diversity and functionality. Furthermore, climate change exacerbates soil desiccation and salinity in most drylands. To better understand the potential effects of these changes on dryland microbial communities, we evaluated their taxonomic and functional diversities in two Southern African dryland soils with contrasting aridity and salinity. Fungal community structure was significantly influenced by aridity and salinity, while Bacteria and Archaea only by salinity. Deterministic homogeneous selection was significantly more important for bacterial and archaeal communities' assembly in hyperarid and saline soils when compared to those from arid soils. This suggests that niche partitioning drives bacterial and archaeal communities' assembly under the most extreme conditions. Conversely, stochastic dispersal limitations drove the assembly of fungal communities. Hyperarid and saline soil communities exhibited similar potential functional capacities, demonstrating a disconnect between microbial structure and function. Structure variations could be functionally compensated by different taxa with similar functions, as implied by the high levels of functional redundancy. Consequently, while environmental selective pressures shape the dryland microbial community assembly and structures, they do not influence their potential functionality. This suggests that they are functionally stable and that they could be functional even unde...