Abstract
Animal carcasses introduce large amounts of nitrates and ammonium into the soil ecosystem. Some of this ammonium is transformed from nitrite through the nrfA-type microbial community. However, it is unclear how nrfA-type microorganisms respond to the decomposition of corpses. This study applied high-throughput sequencing to characterize the ecological succession of nrfA-type microbial communities in grassland soil. Our results showed that Cyclobacterium and Trueperella were the predominant genera for nrfA-type communities in soil with a decomposing corpse (experimental group), while Cyclobacterium and Archangium were dominant in soil without a corpse (control group). The alpha diversity indexes and the resistance and resilience indexes of the microbial communities initially increased and then decreased during decomposition. Compared with the control group, nrfA-encoding community structure in the experimental group gradually became divergent with succession and temporal turnover accelerated. Network analysis revealed that the microbial communities of the experimental group had more complex interactions than those of the control groups. Moreover, the bacterial community assembly in the experimental group was governed by stochastic processes, and the communities of the experimental group had a weaker dispersal capacity than those of the control group. Our results reveal the succession patterns of the nrfA-type microbial communities during degradation of wild animal corpses, which can offer references for demonstrating the ecological mechanism underlying the changes in the nrfA-type microbial community during carcass decay.
Key points
• Corpse decay accelerates the temporal turnover of the nrfA-type community in soil.
• Corpse decay changes the ecological succession of the nrfA-type community in soil.
• Corpse decay leads to a complex co-occurrence pattern of the nrfA-type community in soil.
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Data availability
The original nrfA gene sequence data in this study were deposited at the European Nucleotide Archive by accession number PRJEB 45,366 (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/ PRJEB 45,366).
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31700383, 42007026, and 32071556).
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H.L. and W.S. were responsible for conceptualization, data curation, and formal analysis. H.L. was responsible for funding acquisition; W.S. and S.W. finished the work of investigation, methodology, project administration, and resources. H.L. and W.S. finished the work of software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. All authors have contributed to writing—review and editing.
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The animal processing in our study was approved by the Animal Welfare and Ethics Committee of Lanzhou University. The related experimental methods and procedures strictly followed the related guidelines.
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Su, W., Wang, S., Yang, J. et al. Corpse decay of wild animals leads to the divergent succession of nrfA-type microbial communities. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 106, 5287–5300 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-022-12065-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-022-12065-z