Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Orchestrate Soil Microbial Community Assembly Along a Salix cupularis Restoration Chronosequence in a Desertified Alpine Grassland

作者：Xueqi Cai, Xingpeng Hu, Fei Yan, Dongming Chen, Bingxue Xiao, Xin Zheng, Kangqi Zhang, Jiqiong ZHOU, Zhouwen Ma, Feida Sun, Yan Peng, Xiao Ma, Jeyakumar Paramsothy, Ran Xue, Lin Liu · 发表于：Ecology and Evolution · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1002/ece3.73133 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Mycorrhizal Fungi and Plant Interactions、Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology、Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics

ABSTRACT Belowground microbes are emerging targets for ecosystem restoration. Understanding the assembly mechanisms of these microbial communities is critical for predicting ecosystem trajectories and optimizing restoration interventions. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are hypothesized to be key drivers of these eco‐evolutionary dynamics as a crucial and unique functional group associating with approximately 80% of terrestrial plant species. However, relatively little empirical information is available on the role of AMF in the soil microbial community assembly. Here, we used Salix cupularis , a native pioneer shrub species of desertified alpine meadows, to investigate the temporal dynamics of soil rhizosphere microbial communities across a restoration chronosequence (5, 10, and 20 years), with a particular focus on the AMF community. The results showed that minimal changes occurred in bacterial community structure, whereas fungal community exhibited more pronounced shifts along the chronosequence. Bacterial community assembly was initially deterministic and then became stochastic, while fungal assembly was consistently stochastic. Shrub planting enhanced the complexity of both bacterial and fungal networks over time. Co‐occurrence networks and Pearson correlation analysis revealed the “time‐dependent” regulatory role of the AMF community in soil microbial assembly. AMF acted as an orchestrator in the 10th year after planting (the edge density of AMF peaking at 15.0) prio...