Salinity controls soil microbial community structure and function in coastal estuarine wetlands. (24th October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhang, Guangliang; Bai, Junhong; Tebbe, Christoph C.; Zhao, Qingqing; Jia, Jia; Wang, Wei; Wang, Xin; Yu, Lu
• Other Names: Liu Shuang‐Jiang guestEditor.; Wu Xiao‐Lei guestEditor.; Huang Wei guestEditor.; Zhang Yu‐Zhong guestEditor.; Wang Fengping guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Environmental microbiology. Volume 23:Number 2(2021)
• Page Start: 1020
• Page End: 1037
• Publication Date: 2020-10-24
• Subjects: Microbial ecology -- Periodicals; Environmental Microbiology -- Periodicals; 579.17
• DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.15281
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1462-2912

Abstract

Summary: Soil salinity acts as a critical environmental filter on microbial communities, but the consequences for microbial diversity and biogeochemical processes are poorly understood. Here, we characterized soil bacterial communities and microbial functional genes in a coastal estuarine wetland ecosystem across a gradient (~5 km) ranging from oligohaline to hypersaline habitats by applying the PCR‐amplified 16S rRNA (rRNA) genes sequencing and microarray‐based GeoChip 5.0 respectively. Results showed that saline soils in marine intertidal and supratidal zone exhibited higher bacterial richness and Faith's phylogenetic diversity than that in the freshwater‐affected habitats. The relative abundance of taxa assigned to Gammaproteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes was higher with increasing salinity, while those affiliated with Acidobacteria, Chloroflexi and Cyanobacteria were more prevalent in wetland soils with low salinity. The phylogenetic inferences demonstrated the deterministic role of salinity filtering on the bacterial community assembly processes. The abundance of most functional genes involved in carbon degradation and nitrogen cycling correlated negatively with salinity, except for the hzo gene, suggesting a critical role of the anammox process in tidal affected zones. Overall, the salinity filtering effect shapes the soil bacterial community composition, and soil salinity act as a critical inhibitor in the soil biogeochemical processes in estuary ecosystems.