School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, Deiniol Road, Bangor, LL57 2UW, Gwynedd, UK.
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Environment Centre Wales, Deiniol Road, Bangor, LL57 2UW, Gwynedd, UK.
Nat Commun. 2019 Mar 7;10(1):1107. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09031-1.
Soil biota accounts for ~25% of global biodiversity and is vital to nutrient cycling and primary production. There is growing momentum to study total belowground biodiversity across large ecological scales to understand how habitat and soil properties shape belowground communities. Microbial and animal components of belowground communities follow divergent responses to soil properties and land use intensification; however, it is unclear whether this extends across heterogeneous ecosystems. Here, a national-scale metabarcoding analysis of 436 locations across 7 different temperate ecosystems shows that belowground animal and microbial (bacteria, archaea, fungi, and protists) richness follow divergent trends, whereas β-diversity does not. Animal richness is governed by intensive land use and unaffected by soil properties, while microbial richness was driven by environmental properties across land uses. Our findings demonstrate that established divergent patterns of belowground microbial and animal diversity are consistent across heterogeneous land uses and are detectable using a standardised metabarcoding approach.
土壤生物群系约占全球生物多样性的 25%，对养分循环和初级生产至关重要。越来越多的人致力于在大生态尺度上研究地下生物多样性，以了解栖息地和土壤特性如何塑造地下群落。地下群落中的微生物和动物成分对土壤特性和土地利用集约化的反应不同；然而，目前尚不清楚这种情况是否会扩展到异质生态系统。在这里，对 7 个不同温带生态系统的 436 个地点进行了全国范围内的宏条形码分析，结果表明，地下动物和微生物（细菌、古菌、真菌和原生动物）的丰富度呈现出不同的趋势，而β多样性则没有。动物丰富度受集约土地利用的影响，不受土壤特性的影响，而微生物丰富度则受土地利用过程中的环境特性的驱动。我们的研究结果表明，已建立的地下微生物和动物多样性的不同模式在不同的土地利用方式下是一致的，并且可以使用标准化的宏条形码方法来检测。
