CAS Key Laboratory for Environmental Biotechnology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Mol Ecol Resour. 2019 Nov;19(6):1565-1577. doi: 10.1111/1755-0998.13081. Epub 2019 Sep 24.
While macroscopic interkingdom relationships have been intensively investigated in various ecosystems, the above-belowground ecology in natural ecosystems has been poorly understood, especially for the plant-microbe associations at a regional scale. In this study, we proposed a workflow to construct interdomain ecological networks (IDEN) between multiple plants and various microbes (bacteria and archaea in this study). Across 30 latitudinal forests in China, the regional IDEN showed particular topological features, including high connectance, nested structure, asymmetric specialization and modularity. Also, plant species exhibited strong preference to specific microbial groups, and the observed network was significantly different from randomly rewired networks. Network module analysis indicated that a majority of microbes associated with plants within modules rather than across modules, suggesting specialized associations between plants and microorganisms. Consistent plant-microbe associations were captured via IDENs constructed within individual forest locations, which reinforced the validity of IDEN analysis. In addition, the plant-forest link distribution showed the geographical distribution of plants had higher endemicity than that of microorganisms. With cautious experimental design and data processing, this study shows interdomain species associations between plants and microbes in natural forest ecosystems and provides new insights into our understanding of meta-communities across different domain species.
虽然在各种生态系统中已经深入研究了宏观的种间关系，但对于自然生态系统中的地上-地下生态学，人们的了解甚少，特别是对于区域尺度上的植物-微生物的相互作用。在这项研究中，我们提出了一种工作流程，用于构建多种植物与各种微生物（本研究中的细菌和古菌）之间的跨领域生态网络（IDEN）。在跨越中国 30 个纬度的森林中，区域 IDEN 表现出特定的拓扑特征，包括高连接度、嵌套结构、不对称专业化和模块性。此外，植物物种对特定微生物群具有强烈的偏好，并且观察到的网络与随机重连网络有显著差异。网络模块分析表明，大多数与植物相关的微生物在模块内而不是在模块间存在关联，这表明植物和微生物之间存在专门的相互作用。通过在单个森林地点构建 IDEN 来捕获一致的植物-微生物关联，这加强了 IDEN 分析的有效性。此外，植物-森林连接分布表明，植物的地理分布比微生物的地理分布具有更高的特有性。通过谨慎的实验设计和数据处理，本研究展示了自然森林生态系统中植物和微生物之间的跨领域物种相互作用，为我们理解不同领域物种之间的元群落提供了新的视角。
