Chen Huaihai, Ma Kayan, Huang Yu, Yao Zhiyuan, Chu Chengjin
State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China.
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
Front Microbiol. 2021 Oct 7;12:716764. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.716764. eCollection 2021.
Anthropogenic disturbances and global climate change are causing large-scale biodiversity loss and threatening ecosystem functions. However, due to the lack of knowledge on microbial species loss, our understanding on how functional profiles of soil microbes respond to diversity decline is still limited. Here, we evaluated the biotic homogenization of global soil metagenomic data to examine whether microbial functional structure is resilient to significant diversity reduction. Our results showed that although biodiversity loss caused a decrease in taxonomic species by 72%, the changes in the relative abundance of diverse functional categories were limited. The stability of functional structures associated with microbial species richness decline in terrestrial systems suggests a decoupling of taxonomy and function. The changes in functional profile with biodiversity loss were function-specific, with broad-scale metabolism functions decreasing and typical nutrient-cycling functions increasing. Our results imply high levels of microbial physiological versatility in the face of significant biodiversity decline, which, however, does not necessarily mean that a loss in total functional abundance, such as microbial activity, can be overlooked in the background of unprecedented species extinction.
人为干扰和全球气候变化正在导致大规模的生物多样性丧失，并威胁着生态系统功能。然而，由于对微生物物种丧失缺乏了解，我们对土壤微生物功能谱如何应对多样性下降的认识仍然有限。在此，我们评估了全球土壤宏基因组数据的生物同质化，以检验微生物功能结构对显著的多样性减少是否具有恢复力。我们的结果表明，尽管生物多样性丧失导致分类物种减少了72%，但不同功能类别的相对丰度变化有限。陆地系统中与微生物物种丰富度下降相关的功能结构稳定性表明分类学与功能之间存在解耦。生物多样性丧失时功能谱的变化具有功能特异性，大规模代谢功能减少，而典型的养分循环功能增加。我们的结果表明，面对显著的生物多样性下降，微生物具有高度的生理多功能性，然而，这并不一定意味着在前所未有的物种灭绝背景下，诸如微生物活性等总功能丰度的损失可以被忽视。
