The study found a link between ecosystem multifunctionality and microbial community aspects

Ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) is the ability of an ecosystem to provide multiple functions simultaneously. Microorganisms are representative of soil communities and have diverse functional properties that support many ecosystem functions. However, the complex relationships between the microbial network and EMF, especially at a large spatial scale, are largely unknown.

Researchers from the Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences selected 30 high-order rivers for soil, sediment, and water sampling along a latitudinal gradient in eastern China to calculate EMF using 18 variables related to nitrogen cycling, nutrient pooling, and plant productivity. and water quality. Meanwhile, microbial diversity and co-occurrence network were analyzed.

There were results Published Inside mSystems In a paper titled „Linking ecosystem diversity to microbial community features in rivers across a latitudinal gradient.”

In riparian rhizosphere and bulk soil, but not in channel sediments, EMF had significant negative correlations with latitude. In channel sediments, microbial taxonomy and functional richness were significantly higher in the low-latitude group than in the high-latitude group. The complexity of microbial co-occurrence networks increased with increasing latitude.

A study of the contributions of abiotic and biotic factors to EMF revealed that environmental conditions, in particular, geographic and climatic factors, are the main drivers of EMF. Microbial diversity and network complexity contributed little to explaining EMF, and only interagency centralization was significantly associated with EMF.

This study fills an important knowledge gap on latitudinal patterns and drivers of EMF in river ecosystems and provides new insights into how microbial diversity and network complexity affect EMF from a metagenomic perspective.