Environmental selection overturns the decay relationship of soil prokaryotic community over geographic distance across grassland biotas

Abstract

Though being fundamental to global diversity distribution, little is known about the geographic pattern of soil microorganisms across different biotas on a large scale. Here, we investigated soil prokaryotic communities from Chinese northern grasslands on a scale up to 4,000 km in both alpine and temperate biotas. Prokaryotic similarities increased over geographic distance after tipping points of 1,760 - 1,920 km, generating a significant U-shape pattern. Such pattern was likely due to decreased disparities in environmental heterogeneity over geographic distance when across biotas, supported by three lines of evidences: 1) prokaryotic similarities still decreased with the environmental distance, 2) environmental selection dominated prokaryotic assembly, and 3) short-term environmental heterogeneity followed the U-shape pattern spatially, especially attributed to dissolved nutrients. In sum, these results demonstrate that environmental selection overwhelmed the geographic 'distance' effect when across biotas, overturning the previously well-accepted geographic pattern for microbes on a large scale.

Data availability

Sequencing data has been deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive under accession number: PRJNA 729210

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Biao Zhang

    College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3102-8300
  2. Kai Xue

    College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    For correspondence
    xuekai@ucas.ac.cn
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3504-0024
  3. Shutong Zhou

    College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Kui Wang

    College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Wenjing Liu

    College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Cong Xu

    Aerospace Information Research Institute, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Lizhen Cui

    College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Linfeng Li

    College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Qinwei Ran

    College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Zongsong Wang

    College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Ronghai Hu

    College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8041-2483
  12. Yanbin Hao

    College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  13. Xiaoyong Cui

    Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  14. Yanfen Wang

    College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5666-9289

Funding

Chinese Academy of Sciences (Strategic Priority Research and Program A,20050104)

  • Yanfen Wang

National Natural Science Foundation of China (42041005)

  • Kai Xue

Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (The Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) program,2019QZKK0304)

  • Yanfen Wang

Chinese Academy of Sciences (Strategic Priority Research Program A,XDA1907304)

  • Yanfen Wang

Chinese Academy of Sciences (Strategic Priority Research Program B,XDB15010201)

  • Yanfen Wang

Chinese Academy of Sciences (Light of West China)

  • Kai Xue

Chinese Academy of Sciences (Sanjiangyuan National Park Joint Program,LHZX-2020-02-01)

  • Yanfen Wang

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2022, Zhang et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Biao Zhang
  2. Kai Xue
  3. Shutong Zhou
  4. Kui Wang
  5. Wenjing Liu
  6. Cong Xu
  7. Lizhen Cui
  8. Linfeng Li
  9. Qinwei Ran
  10. Zongsong Wang
  11. Ronghai Hu
  12. Yanbin Hao
  13. Xiaoyong Cui
  14. Yanfen Wang
(2022)
Environmental selection overturns the decay relationship of soil prokaryotic community over geographic distance across grassland biotas
eLife 11:e70164.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70164

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70164

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