Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610299, China; School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610299, China; College of Ecology and Environment, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610059, China.
J Hazard Mater. 2024 Oct 5;478:135438. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2024.135438. Epub 2024 Aug 5.
Microorganisms are pivotal in sustaining soil functions, yet the specific contributions of bacterial and fungal succession on the functions during vegetation restoration in metallic tailing reservoirs remains elusive. Here, we explored bacterial and fungal succession and their impacts on soil multifunctionality along a ∼50-year vegetation restoration chronosequence in China's largest vanadium titano-magnetite tailing reservoir. We found a significant increase in soil multifunctionality, an index comprising factors pertinent to soil fertility and microbially mediated nutrient cycling, along the chronosequence. Despite increasing heavy metal levels, both bacterial and fungal communities exhibited significant increase in richness and network complexity over time. However, fungi demonstrated a slower succession rate and more consistent composition than bacteria, indicating their relatively higher resilience to environmental changes. Soil multifunctionality was intimately linked to bacterial and fungal richness or complexity. Nevertheless, when scrutinizing both richness and complexity concurrently, the correlations disappeared for bacteria but remained robust for fungi. This persistence reveals the critical role of the fungal community resilience in sustaining soil multifunctionality, particularly through their stable interactions with powerful core taxa. Our findings highlight the importance of fungal succession in enhancing soil multifunctionality during vegetation restoration in metallic tailing reservoirs, and manipulating fungal community may expedite ecological recovery of areas polluted with heavy metals.
微生物在维持土壤功能方面起着关键作用，但细菌和真菌演替对金属尾矿库植被恢复过程中功能的具体贡献仍不清楚。在这里，我们在中国最大的钒钛磁铁尾矿库的一个约 50 年的植被恢复时间序列中，探索了细菌和真菌演替及其对土壤多功能性的影响。我们发现，随着时间的推移，土壤多功能性（一个包含与土壤肥力和微生物介导的养分循环有关的因素的指标）显著增加。尽管重金属水平不断上升，但细菌和真菌群落的丰富度和网络复杂性都显著增加。然而，真菌的演替速度比细菌慢，组成也比细菌更稳定，这表明它们对环境变化具有相对较高的恢复能力。土壤多功能性与细菌和真菌的丰富度或复杂性密切相关。然而，当同时仔细研究丰富度和复杂性时，细菌的相关性消失了，但真菌的相关性仍然很强。这种持续性表明，真菌群落的恢复力在维持金属尾矿库植被恢复过程中的土壤多功能性方面起着关键作用，特别是通过它们与强大的核心类群的稳定相互作用。我们的研究结果强调了真菌演替在增强金属尾矿库植被恢复过程中土壤多功能性方面的重要性，并且操纵真菌群落可能会加速受重金属污染地区的生态恢复。
