The legacy of bacterial invasions on soil native communities |
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Authors: | Jiajia Xing Xiu Jia Haizhen Wang Bin Ma Joana Falcão Salles Jianming Xu |
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Institution: | 1. Institute of Soil and Water Resources and Environmental Science, College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058 China
Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Agricultural Resources and Environment, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058 China;2. Department of Microbial Ecology, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, 9747 AG The Netherlands;3. Institute of Soil and Water Resources and Environmental Science, College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058 China |
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Abstract: | Soil microbial communities are often not resistant to the impact caused by microbial invasions, both in terms of structure and functionality, but it remains unclear whether these changes persist over time. Here, we used three strains of Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli O157:H7), a species used for modelling bacterial invasions, to evaluate the resilience of the bacterial communities from four Chinese soils to invasion. The impact of E. coli O157:H7 strains on soil native communities was tracked for 120 days by analysing bacterial community composition as well as their metabolic potential. We showed that soil native communities were not resistant to invasion, as demonstrated by a decline in bacterial diversity and shifts in bacterial composition in all treatments. The resilience of native bacterial communities (diversity and composition) was inversely correlated with invader's persistence in soils (R2 = 0.487, p < 0.001). Microbial invasions also impacted the functionality of the soil communities (niche breadth and community niche), the degree of resilience being dependent on soil or native community diversity. Collectively, our results indicate that bacteria invasions can potentially leave a footprint in the structure and functionality of soil communities, indicating the need of assessing the legacy of introducing exotic species in soil environments. |
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