Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Torino, Via Accademia Albertina 13, 10123 Torino, Italy.
Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, University of Tuscia, Largo dell'Università, 01100 Viterbo, Italy.
Sci Total Environ. 2023 May 1;871:162106. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162106. Epub 2023 Feb 9.
Anthropogenic disturbance on natural ecosystems is growing in frequency and magnitude affecting all ecosystems components. Understanding the response of different types of biocoenosis to human disturbance is urgently needed and it can be achieved by adopting a metacommunity framework. With the aid of advanced molecular techniques, we investigated sediment communities of Fungi, Bacteria and Archaea in four Italian show caves, aiming to disentangle the effects induced by tourism on their diversity and to highlight changes in the driving forces that shape their community composition. We modelled diversity measures against proxies of tourism pressure. With this approach we demonstrate that the cave tourism has a direct effect on the community of Bacteria and an indirect influence on Fungi and Archaea. By analysing the main driving forces influencing the community composition of the three microbial groups, we highlighted that stochastic factors override dispersal-related processes and environmental selection in show caves compared to undisturbed areas. Thanks to this approach, we provide new perspectives on the dynamics of microbial communities under human disturbance suggesting that a proper understanding of the underlying selective mechanisms requires a comprehensive and multi-taxonomic approach.
人为干扰对自然生态系统的频率和规模都在不断增加，影响着所有生态系统的组成部分。了解不同类型生物群落在人类干扰下的响应是迫切需要的，可以通过采用元社区框架来实现。借助先进的分子技术，我们调查了意大利四个展示洞穴中的真菌、细菌和古菌的沉积物群落，旨在厘清旅游对其多样性的影响，并强调塑造其群落组成的驱动因素的变化。我们将多样性度量指标与旅游压力的替代指标进行了拟合。通过这种方法，我们证明了洞穴旅游对细菌群落有直接影响，对真菌和古菌有间接影响。通过分析影响三个微生物群体群落组成的主要驱动因素，我们强调了在展示洞穴中，随机因素超过了扩散相关过程和环境选择，与未受干扰的地区相比。通过这种方法，我们为人类干扰下微生物群落的动态提供了新的视角，表明要正确理解潜在的选择机制，需要采用全面的多分类学方法。
