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Soil microbial communities shift along an urban gradient in Berlin, Germany

The microbial communities inhabiting urban soils determine the functioning of these soils, in regards to their ability to cycle nutrients and support plant communities. In an increasingly urbanized world these properties are of the utmost importance, and the microbial communities responsible are wor...

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Autores principales: Whitehead, James, Roy, Julien, Hempel, Stefan, Rillig, Matthias C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9412169/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36033838
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.972052
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author Whitehead, James
Roy, Julien
Hempel, Stefan
Rillig, Matthias C.
author_facet Whitehead, James
Roy, Julien
Hempel, Stefan
Rillig, Matthias C.
author_sort Whitehead, James
collection PubMed
description The microbial communities inhabiting urban soils determine the functioning of these soils, in regards to their ability to cycle nutrients and support plant communities. In an increasingly urbanized world these properties are of the utmost importance, and the microbial communities responsible are worthy of exploration. We used 53 grassland sites spread across Berlin to describe and explain the impacts of urbanity and other environmental parameters upon the diversity and community composition of four microbial groups. These groups were (i) the Fungi, with a separate dataset for (ii) the Glomeromycota, (iii) the Bacteria, and (iv) the protist phylum Cercozoa. We found that urbanity had distinct impacts on fungal richness, which tended to increase. Geographic distance between sites and soil chemistry, in addition to urbanity, drove microbial community composition, with site connectivity being important for Glomeromycotan communities, potentially due to plant host communities. Our findings suggest that many microbial species are well adapted to urban soils, as supported by an increase in diversity being a far more common result of urbanity than the reverse. However, we also found distinctly separate distributions of operational taxonomic unit (OTU)s from the same species, shedding doubt of the reliability of indicator species, and the use of taxonomy to draw conclusion on functionality. Our observational study employed an extensive set of sites across an urbanity gradient, in the region of the German capital, to produce a rich microbial dataset; as such it can serve as a blueprint for other such investigations.
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spelling pubmed-94121692022-08-27 Soil microbial communities shift along an urban gradient in Berlin, Germany Whitehead, James Roy, Julien Hempel, Stefan Rillig, Matthias C. Front Microbiol Microbiology The microbial communities inhabiting urban soils determine the functioning of these soils, in regards to their ability to cycle nutrients and support plant communities. In an increasingly urbanized world these properties are of the utmost importance, and the microbial communities responsible are worthy of exploration. We used 53 grassland sites spread across Berlin to describe and explain the impacts of urbanity and other environmental parameters upon the diversity and community composition of four microbial groups. These groups were (i) the Fungi, with a separate dataset for (ii) the Glomeromycota, (iii) the Bacteria, and (iv) the protist phylum Cercozoa. We found that urbanity had distinct impacts on fungal richness, which tended to increase. Geographic distance between sites and soil chemistry, in addition to urbanity, drove microbial community composition, with site connectivity being important for Glomeromycotan communities, potentially due to plant host communities. Our findings suggest that many microbial species are well adapted to urban soils, as supported by an increase in diversity being a far more common result of urbanity than the reverse. However, we also found distinctly separate distributions of operational taxonomic unit (OTU)s from the same species, shedding doubt of the reliability of indicator species, and the use of taxonomy to draw conclusion on functionality. Our observational study employed an extensive set of sites across an urbanity gradient, in the region of the German capital, to produce a rich microbial dataset; as such it can serve as a blueprint for other such investigations. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-08-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9412169/ /pubmed/36033838 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.972052 Text en Copyright © 2022 Whitehead, Roy, Hempel and Rillig. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Microbiology
Whitehead, James
Roy, Julien
Hempel, Stefan
Rillig, Matthias C.
Soil microbial communities shift along an urban gradient in Berlin, Germany
title Soil microbial communities shift along an urban gradient in Berlin, Germany
title_full Soil microbial communities shift along an urban gradient in Berlin, Germany
title_fullStr Soil microbial communities shift along an urban gradient in Berlin, Germany
title_full_unstemmed Soil microbial communities shift along an urban gradient in Berlin, Germany
title_short Soil microbial communities shift along an urban gradient in Berlin, Germany
title_sort soil microbial communities shift along an urban gradient in berlin, germany
topic Microbiology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9412169/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36033838
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.972052
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