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Yang W, Zhang S, Li A, Yang J, Pang S, Hu Z, Wang Z, Han X, Zhang X. Nitrogen deposition mediates more stochastic processes in structuring plant community than soil microbial community in the Eurasian steppe. SCIENCE CHINA. LIFE SCIENCES 2024; 67:778-788. [PMID: 38212459 DOI: 10.1007/s11427-023-2416-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2023] [Accepted: 08/08/2023] [Indexed: 01/13/2024]
Abstract
Anthropogenic environmental changes may affect community assembly through mediating both deterministic (e.g., competitive exclusion and environmental filtering) and stochastic processes (e.g., birth/death and dispersal/colonization). It is traditionally thought that environmental changes have a larger mediation effect on stochastic processes in structuring soil microbial community than aboveground plant community; however, this hypothesis remains largely untested. Here we report an unexpected pattern that nitrogen (N) deposition has a larger mediation effect on stochastic processes in structuring plant community than soil microbial community (those <2 mm in diameter, including archaea, bacteria, fungi, and protists) in the Eurasian steppe. We performed a ten-year nitrogen deposition experiment in a semiarid grassland ecosystem in Inner Mongolia, manipulating nine rates (0-50 g N m-2 per year) at two frequencies (nitrogen added twice or 12 times per year) under two grassland management strategies (fencing or mowing). We separated the compositional variation of plant and soil microbial communities caused by each treatment into the deterministic and stochastic components with a recently-developed method. As nitrogen addition rate increased, the relative importance of stochastic component of plant community first increased and then decreased, while that of soil microbial community first decreased and then increased. On the whole, the relative importance of stochastic component was significantly larger in plant community (0.552±0.035; mean±standard error) than in microbial community (0.427±0.035). Consistently, the proportion of compositional variation explained by the deterministic soil and community indices was smaller for plant community (0.172-0.186) than microbial community (0.240-0.767). Meanwhile, as nitrogen addition rate increased, the linkage between plant and microbial community composition first became weaker and then became stronger. The larger stochasticity in plant community relative to microbial community assembly suggested that more stochastic strategies (e.g., seeds addition) should be adopted to maintain above- than below-ground biodiversity under the pressure of nitrogen deposition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wei Yang
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Shuhan Zhang
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Ang Li
- State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China
| | - Junjie Yang
- State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China
| | - Shuang Pang
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Zonghao Hu
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Zhiping Wang
- State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China
| | - Xingguo Han
- State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China.
| | - Ximei Zhang
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China.
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Yang W, Yang J, Fan Y, Guo Q, Jiang N, Babalola OO, Han X, Zhang X. The two sides of resistance-resilience relationship in both aboveground and belowground communities in the Eurasian steppe. THE NEW PHYTOLOGIST 2023. [PMID: 37129435 DOI: 10.1111/nph.18942] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2023] [Accepted: 04/03/2023] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
The ongoing nitrogen (N) deposition has led to profound changes in aboveground and belowground ecosystems. However, the stability of plant and soil microbial community toward N addition in terms of resistance and resilience is less understood. We established a long-running field trial (2008-2018) in a series of N applications in combination with a mowing and fencing (unmown) treatment in a semiarid steppe. We assessed the resistance via ongoing N treatment of one subplot and the resilience via discontinuing N treatment in another to promote natural recovery since 2014. Plant resistance was negatively correlated with N application rate, while microbial resistance was independent of N rate. Mowing significantly reduced plant resistance and resilience, reduced soil microbial resistance but improved its resilience. Generally, plants are more resilient but less resistant to N than soil microbes. The two sides of resistance-resilience relationship were revealed: trade-offs exist between resistance and resilience for both plants and microbes at the community level; and trade-offs between resistance and resilience cannot be scaled down to species/group level. This study provided an important theoretical basis for the recovery and conservation of semiarid steppe and new insight into resistance-resilience relationship.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wei Yang
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Junjie Yang
- State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China
| | - Yi Fan
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Quankuan Guo
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Nana Jiang
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Olubukola Oluranti Babalola
- Food Security and Safety Niche Area, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, North-West University, Private Bag X2046, Mmabatho, 2735, South Africa
| | - Xingguo Han
- State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China
| | - Ximei Zhang
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
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Li T, Zhang Z, Ma Y, Song Y, Yang G, Han X, Zhang X. Nitrogen deposition experiment mimicked with NH 4NO 3 overestimates the effect on soil microbial community composition and functional potential in the Eurasian steppe. ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOME 2022; 17:49. [PMID: 36096891 PMCID: PMC9469546 DOI: 10.1186/s40793-022-00441-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/06/2022] [Accepted: 08/31/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND The nitrogenous compound deposited from the atmosphere to the soil is complex, but most field experiments mimic nitrogen deposition with the acid NH4NO3 alone. Thus, whether the acid and non-acid nitrogenous compounds have similar effects on biodiversity and ecosystem functions remains understudied. We mimicked nitrogen deposition with acidic NH4NO3 and (NH4)2SO4, and non-acidic urea, slow-released urea and NH4HCO3 in a temperate steppe, and quantified soil microbial taxonomic and functional gene composition with amplicon sequencing and shotgun metagenomics, respectively. RESULTS While NH4NO3 and (NH4)2SO4 significantly altered the soil microbial taxonomic and functional composition as well as their carbon decomposition potential, the other three compounds had smaller effects. CONCLUSION Our results suggested that previous nitrogen deposition experiments mimicked with NH4NO3 or (NH4)2SO4 alone may have overestimated the effect on biodiversity and ecosystem functions in the Eurasian steppe and similar ecosystems affected by mainly nonacidic nitrogen deposition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tingting Li
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Zijia Zhang
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
- CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Erguna Forest-Steppe Ecotone Research Station, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, China
| | - Yiping Ma
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
- CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Erguna Forest-Steppe Ecotone Research Station, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, China
- Tianjin Natural History Museum, Tianjin, 300201, China
| | - Yuqian Song
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
| | - Guojiao Yang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Erguna Forest-Steppe Ecotone Research Station, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, China
| | - Xingguo Han
- State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China
| | - Ximei Zhang
- Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China.
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