Geographic patterns of co-occurrence network topological features for soil microbiota at continental scale in eastern China

By B. Ma, Hai-zhen Wang, M. Dsouza, Jun Lou, Yan He, Z. Dai, P. Brookes, Jianming Xu, Jack A. Gilbert. The ISME Journal, 2016

1,077 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Soil microbiota play a critical role in soil biogeochemical processes and have a profound effect on soil functions. Recent studies have revealed microbial co-occurrence patterns in soil microbial communities, yet the geographic pattern of topological features in soil microbial co-occurrence networks at the continental scale are largely unknown. Here, we investigated the shifts of topological features in co-occurrence networks inferred from soil microbiota along a continental scale in eastern China. Integrating archaeal, bacterial and fungal community datasets, we inferred a meta-community co-occurrence network and analyzed node-level and network-level topological shifts associated with five climatic regions. Both node-level and network-level topological features revealed geographic patterns wherein microorganisms in the northern regions had closer relationships but had a lower interaction influence than those in the southern regions. We further identified topological differences associated with taxonomic groups and demonstrated that co-occurrence patterns were random for archaea and non-random for bacteria and fungi. Given that microbial interactions may contribute to soil functions more than species diversity, this geographic shift of topological features provides new insight into studying microbial biogeographic patterns, their organization and impacts on soil-associated function.

Subfields: Ecology, Molecular Biology, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d8a0724b730a85b53fe461e38b9b51f6c3694fbb

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

In Molecular Biology

In Soil Science

Citations in the corpus

Rhizosphere-associated bacterial network structure and spatial distribution differ significantly from bulk soil in wheat crop fields (2017, background): “One explanation for this topological distinction is the niche differentiation (Ma et al., 2016) among bulk soil, loosely bound soil and tightly bound soil.”
Soil microbiomes with distinct assemblies through vertical soil profiles drive the cycling of multiple nutrients in reforested ecosystems (2018, background): “Microbial distributions have been well investigated at global [10], continental [20], and regional scales [21, 22].”
Biogeographic patterns of microbial association networks in paddy soil within Eastern China (2020, background): “Although the network hub is missing in many network studies (Barber� an et al., 2012; Faust et al., 2012; Deng et al., 2016; Ma et al., 2016; Shi et al., 2016), a number of network hubs in the fungal and diazotrophic networks, as well as the bacteria-fungi network, were identified (Tables 2 and S6).”
Specialized metabolic functions of keystone taxa sustain soil microbiome stability (2021, background): “In addition, Gemmatimonas, affiliated with the Gemmatimonadetes, was the most abundant genus involved in phosphonate and phosphinate metabolism, followed by Solirubrobacter within Actinobacteria, and Brevundimonas and Rhizomicrobium within Proteobacteria.”
Cropping practices manipulate abundance patterns of root and soil microbiome members paving the way to smart farming (2018, background): “Keystone taxa are thought to frequently interact with many other taxa, thereby playing an important role in the overall community [67, 68].”
Soil organic matter availability and climate drive latitudinal patterns in bacterial diversity from tropical to cold temperate forests (2018, background): “However, to date, limited information is available concerning the geographic patterns of soil bacterial diversity in Chinese forests (Ma et al., 2016; Wang, Zheng, et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2016).”