posted on 2023-05-10, 07:36authored byMengting Yuan, Anne Kakouridis, Evan Starr, Nhu Nguyen, Shengjing ShiShengjing Shi, Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Erin Nuccio, Jizhong Zhou, Mary Firestone
Soil bacteria and fungi are known to form niche-specific communities that differ between actively growing and decaying roots. Yet almost nothing is known about the cross-kingdom interactions that frame these communities and the environmental filtering that defines these potentially friendly or competing neighbors. We explored the temporal and spatial patterns of soil fungal (mycorrhizal and nonmycorrhizal) and bacterial cooccurrence near roots of wild oat grass, Avena fatua, growing in its naturalized soil in a greenhouse experiment. Amplicon sequences of the fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and bacterial 16S rRNA genes from rhizosphere and bulk soils collected at multiple plant growth stages were used to construct covariation-based networks as a step toward identifying fungal-bacterial associations. Corresponding stable-isotope-enabled metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) of bacteria identified in cooccurrence networks were used to inform potential mechanisms underlying the observed links. Bacterial-fungal networks were significantly different in rhizosphere versus bulk soils and between arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and nonmycorrhizal fungi. Over 12 weeks of plant growth, nonmycorrhizal fungi formed increasingly complex networks with bacteria in rhizosphere soils, while AMF more frequently formed networks with bacteria in bulk soils. Analysis of network-associated bacterial MAGs suggests that some of the fungal-bacterial links that we identified are potential indicators of bacterial breakdown and consumption of fungal biomass, while others intimate shared ecological niches.
History
Rights statement
Open Access. This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. Foreign copyrights may apply.
Language
English
Does this contain Māori information or data?
No
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Journal title
mBio
ISSN
2150-7511
Citation
Yuan, M. M., Kakouridis, A., Starr, E., Nguyen, N., Shi, S., Pett-Ridge, J., & Nuccio, E., Zhou, J., & Firestone, M. (2021). Fungal-bacterial cooccurrence patterns differ between arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and nonmycorrhizal fungi across soil niches. mBio, 12(2), e03509–20. doi:10.1128/mBio.03509-20