Abstract
Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are a dominant ecological landscape of drylands, which have a significant impact on global biogeochemical flux. However, it is unclear how bacterial community and physiological characteristics vary along the BSCs successional stages. In this study, bacterial community composition, physiological characteristics, and monosaccharide composition of extracellular polysaccharides (EPSs) were compared among different successional stages. Our findings demonstrated that besides the dominant bacterial species, the bacterial communities also showed considerable differences between these two stages. Cyanobacteria were keystone taxa in the early stage, while heterotrophic bacteria (Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Acidobacteria) were keystone taxa in the later stages. According to the results of CO2 exchange, cyanobacterial crusts accumulated net carbon faster than moss crusts, while moss crusts had a significantly higher respiration rate. The monosaccharide analysis indicated that the EPSs components also varied depending on BSCs' successional stages. Specifically, the contents of rhamnose and arabinose were higher in the cyanobacterial crusts than other types of crusts, while the contents of fucose, xylose, mannose and glucose were the highest in cyanobacterial-lichen crusts, and galactose content was highest in the moss crusts. Altogether, our results stress the heterogeneous variation of BSCs along with succession, and this work offered a fresh viewpoint for a deeper comprehension of the interactions between the monosaccharide components of EPS and the networks of bacterial communities in BSCs.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, for the infrastructure made available for this study, and the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
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Funding of this research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U1703120; 31300100; 51878523).
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All authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. Data collection and the first draft of the manuscript were performed by JW. The formal analysis and data processing were performed by JX、ZL and YC. Li Wu provided technical support and guidance. The proofreading of the manuscript was completed by ZZ and LY. All authors commented on the previous versions of the manuscript and have read and approved the final manuscript.
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Wang, J., Xiao, J., Zhang, Z. et al. Changes of bacterial community structure,monosaccharide composition and CO2 exchange along the successional stages of biological soil crusts. Environ Geochem Health 45, 5387–5400 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-023-01572-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-023-01572-1