Nitrogen addition and warming rapidly alter microbial community compositions in the mangrove sediment

Changyi Xie; Xingyu Ma; Yan Zhao; Tianjiao Dai; Weimin Song; Qi Qi; Jianxiang Feng; Xiaowei Cui; Jian Zhou; Xiaofang Huang; Fei Qi; Yufei Zeng; Jizhong Zhou; Guanghui Lin; Yunfeng Yang

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157992

Nitrogen addition and warming rapidly alter microbial community compositions in the mangrove sediment

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Dec 1:850:157992. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157992. Epub 2022 Aug 13.

Authors

Changyi Xie¹, Xingyu Ma¹, Yan Zhao², Tianjiao Dai¹, Weimin Song³, Qi Qi¹, Jianxiang Feng⁴, Xiaowei Cui², Jian Zhou², Xiaofang Huang⁵, Fei Qi⁶, Yufei Zeng¹, Jizhong Zhou⁷, Guanghui Lin⁸, Yunfeng Yang⁹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
² Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; Key Laboratory of Stable Isotope and Gulf Ecology, Institute of Ocean Engineering, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China.
³ Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; The Yellow River Delta Ecology Research Station of Coastal Wetland, Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai 264003, China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Stable Isotope and Gulf Ecology, Institute of Ocean Engineering, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China; School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
⁵ CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Marine Bio-Resources and Ecology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Marine Biology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510301, China.
⁶ College of Biological Science and Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, China.
⁷ Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA; Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁸ Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; Key Laboratory of Stable Isotope and Gulf Ecology, Institute of Ocean Engineering, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China. Electronic address: lingh@tsinghua.edu.cn.
⁹ State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. Electronic address: yangyf@tsinghua.edu.cn.

PMID: 35970461
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157992

Abstract

The mangrove ecosystem is an important CO₂ sink with an extraordinarily high primary productivity. However, it is vulnerable to the impact of climate warming and eutrophication. While there has been extensive research on plant growth and greenhouse gas emission in mangrove ecosystems, microbial communities, the primary biogeochemical cycling drivers, are much less understood. Here, we examined whether short-term experimental treatments: (1) eutrophication with a supplement of 185 g N m^-2·year^-1 (N), (2) 3°C warming (W), and (3) the dual treatment of N and W (NW) were sufficient to alter microbial communities in the sediment. After 4 months of experiments, most environmental factors remained unchanged. However, N had significant, strong effects on bacterial, fungal, and functional community compositions, while the effects of W on microbial communities were weaker. N increased bacterial richness, phylogenetic diversity, and evenness, owing to stronger stochastic processes induced by eutrophication. There were no interactive effects of N and W on bacterial, fungal, and functional community compositions, suggesting that joint effects of N and W were additive. Concomitant with higher N₂O efflux induced by N, the relative abundances of most bacterial nitrogen cycling genes were increased or remained changed by N. In contrast, N decreased or did not change those of most bacterial carbon degradation genes, while W increased or did not change the relative abundances of most of bacterial and fungal carbon degradation genes, implying higher carbon degradation potentials. As the most abundant inorganic nitrogenous species in mangrove sediment, ammonium was a key factor in shaping microbial functional communities. Collectively, our findings showed that microbial community compositions in the mangrove sediment were highly sensitive to short-term N and W treatments, giving rise to ecological consequences such as higher N₂O efflux.

Keywords: Bacterial and fungal community; Climate warming; Functional community; Nitrogen addition; Stochasicity.

MeSH terms

Ammonium Compounds* / metabolism
Bacteria / metabolism
Carbon / metabolism
Carbon Dioxide / metabolism
Ecosystem
Greenhouse Gases* / metabolism
Microbiota*
Nitrogen / analysis
Phylogeny

Substances

Ammonium Compounds
Greenhouse Gases
Carbon Dioxide
Carbon
Nitrogen