Centre for Biodiversity & Taxonomy, Department of Botany, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, 190 006, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 Jul;30(35):84283-84299. doi: 10.1007/s11356-023-28197-2. Epub 2023 Jun 26.
Soil microbial communities, being situated at the interface of aboveground plant and belowground soil systems, can play a pivotal role in determining ecosystem response to the drivers of global environmental change, including invasive species. In mountains, invasive plants occurring along elevational gradients offer a unique natural experimental system to investigate the impact of invasions in determining patterns and relationships of soil microbial diversity and nutrient pools at much shorter spatial distances. Here, we studied the impact of a global plant invader, Leucanthemum vulgare, on the diversity of soil microbiome and physico-chemical attributes along an elevational gradient (1760-2880 m) in Kashmir Himalaya. We used Illumina MiSeq platform to characterize the soil microbiome in pair-wise invaded and uninvaded plots at four different sites along the gradient. We found a total of 1959 bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) belonging to 152 species, and a relatively higher number of 2475 fungal OTUs belonging to 589 species. The α-diversity of soil microbiome showed a gradual increase from low to high elevation and differed significantly (p < 0.05) between the invaded and uninvaded plots. The β-diversity revealed distinct microbiome clustering among the sampling sites. Plant invasion also altered soil physico-chemical attributes along the elevational gradient. Overall, our findings suggest that the L. vulgare-induced shifts in soil microbiome and nutrient pools may be a belowground self-reinforced mechanism to facilitate its successful invasion along the elevational gradient. Our study provides new insights into invasive plant-microbe relationships with wide implications for climate warming-driven elevational range shifts in mountains.
土壤微生物群落位于地上植物和地下土壤系统的交界处，在决定生态系统对全球环境变化驱动因素的响应方面可以发挥关键作用，包括入侵物种。在山区，沿海拔梯度出现的入侵植物为研究入侵对确定土壤微生物多样性和养分库模式和关系的影响提供了一个独特的自然实验系统，其空间距离要短得多。在这里，我们研究了全球植物入侵物种 Leucanthemum vulgare 对克什米尔喜马拉雅山海拔梯度（1760-2880 米）上土壤微生物多样性和理化属性的影响。我们使用 Illumina MiSeq 平台在梯度上的四个不同地点的成对入侵和未入侵样地中对土壤微生物组进行了特征描述。我们总共发现了 1959 个细菌操作分类单元（OTU），属于 152 个物种，以及相对较多的 2475 个真菌 OTU，属于 589 个物种。土壤微生物组的α多样性从低海拔到高海拔逐渐增加，并且在入侵和未入侵样地之间有显著差异（p<0.05）。β多样性揭示了采样地点之间明显的微生物组聚类。植物入侵还改变了沿海拔梯度的土壤理化属性。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，L. vulgare 引起的土壤微生物组和养分库的变化可能是一种地下自我强化机制，有助于其在海拔梯度上的成功入侵。我们的研究为入侵植物-微生物关系提供了新的见解，对气候变化驱动的山区海拔范围变化具有广泛的意义。
