Osborne Peter, Hall Lindsay J, Kronfeld-Schor Noga, Thybert David, Haerty Wilfried
Earlham Institute, Norwich Research Park Innovation Centre, Colney Lane, Norwich, NR4 7UZ, UK.
Gut Microbes & Health, Quadram Institute Bioscience, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7UQ, UK.
Environ Microbiome. 2020 Dec 1;15(1):20. doi: 10.1186/s40793-020-00367-6.
Almost one third of Earth's land surface is arid, with deserts alone covering more than 46 million square kilometres. Nearly 2.1 billion people inhabit deserts or drylands and these regions are also home to a great diversity of plant and animal species including many that are unique to them. Aridity is a multifaceted environmental stress combining a lack of water with limited food availability and typically extremes of temperature, impacting animal species across the planet from polar cold valleys, to Andean deserts and the Sahara. These harsh environments are also home to diverse microbial communities, demonstrating the ability of bacteria, fungi and archaea to settle and live in some of the toughest locations known. We now understand that these microbial ecosystems i.e. microbiotas, the sum total of microbial life across and within an environment, interact across both the environment, and the macroscopic organisms residing in these arid environments. Although multiple studies have explored these microbial communities in different arid environments, few studies have examined the microbiota of animals which are themselves arid-adapted. Here we aim to review the interactions between arid environments and the microbial communities which inhabit them, covering hot and cold deserts, the challenges these environments pose and some issues arising from limitations in the field. We also consider the work carried out on arid-adapted animal microbiotas, to investigate if any shared patterns or trends exist, whether between organisms or between the animals and the wider arid environment microbial communities. We determine if there are any patterns across studies potentially demonstrating a general impact of aridity on animal-associated microbiomes or benefits from aridity-adapted microbiomes for animals. In the context of increasing desertification and climate change it is important to understand the connections between the three pillars of microbiome, host genome and environment.
地球上近三分之一的陆地表面干旱少雨，仅沙漠面积就超过4600万平方公里。近21亿人居住在沙漠或旱地，这些地区还拥有种类繁多的动植物，其中许多是这些地区特有的。干旱是一种多方面的环境压力，它将缺水与食物供应有限以及极端温度结合在一起，影响着从极地寒冷山谷到安第斯沙漠和撒哈拉沙漠的全球动物物种。这些恶劣环境也是各种微生物群落的家园，证明了细菌、真菌和古生菌能够在一些已知最恶劣的环境中生存。我们现在知道，这些微生物生态系统，即微生物群，是一个环境中内外所有微生物生命的总和，它们在环境以及生活在这些干旱环境中的宏观生物之间相互作用。尽管多项研究探索了不同干旱环境中的这些微生物群落，但很少有研究考察本身适应干旱环境的动物的微生物群。在这里，我们旨在综述干旱环境与栖息其中的微生物群落之间的相互作用，涵盖炎热和寒冷沙漠、这些环境带来的挑战以及该领域局限性所引发的一些问题。我们还考虑了关于适应干旱环境的动物微生物群的研究，以调查是否存在任何共同的模式或趋势，无论是在生物之间，还是在动物与更广泛的干旱环境微生物群落之间。我们确定各项研究中是否存在任何模式，这些模式可能表明干旱对与动物相关的微生物组有普遍影响，或者适应干旱环境的微生物组对动物有益。在沙漠化加剧和气候变化的背景下，了解微生物组、宿主基因组和环境这三大支柱之间的联系非常重要。
