Continental‐scale niche differentiation of dominant topsoil archaea in drylands
Abstract
Archaea represent a diverse group of microorganisms often associated with extreme environments. However, an integrated understanding of biogeographical patterns of the specialist Haloarchaea and the potential generalist ammonia‐oxidizing archaea (AOA) across large‐scale environmental gradients remains limited. We hypothesize that niche differentiation determines their distinct distributions along environmental gradients. To test the hypothesis, we use a continental‐scale research network including 173 dryland sites across northern China. Our results demonstrate that Haloarchaea and AOA dominate topsoil archaeal communities. As hypothesized, Haloarchaea and AOA show strong niche differentiation associated with two ecosystem types mainly found in China's drylands (i.e. deserts vs. grasslands), and they differ in the degree of habitat specialization. The relative abundance and richness of Haloarchaea are higher in deserts due to specialization to relatively high soil salinity and extreme climates, while those of AOA are greater in grassland soils. Our results further indicate a divergence in ecological processes underlying the segregated distributions of Haloarchaea and AOA. Haloarchaea are governed primarily by environmental‐based processes while the more generalist AOA are assembled mostly via spatial‐based processes. Our findings add to existing knowledge of large‐scale biogeography of topsoil archaea, advancing our predictive understanding on changes in topsoil archaeal communities in a drier world.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jul 07, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1111/1462-2920.16099
Entities
People
- Haiyang Gong
- James C. Stegen
- Jianming Deng
- Jiayuan Liu
- Jinzhi Ran
- Junlan Xiong
- Longwei Dong
- Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo
- Mingfei Ji
- Muhammad Adnan Akram
- Muhammad Aqeel
- Qiajun Du
- Qingqing Hou
- Rui Xia
- Shuran Yao
- Weigang Hu
- Yuan Sun
Organizations
- European Regional Development Fund
- Lanzhou University
- Ministry of Science of Spain
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- United States Department of Energy