Abstract
The Western Himalayas offer diverse environments for investigating the diversity and distribution of microbial communities and their response to both the abiotic and biotic factors across the entire altitudinal gradient. Such investigations contribute significantly to our understanding of the complex ecological processes that shape microbial diversity. The proposed study focuses on the investigation of the bacterial and fungal communities in the forest and alpine grasslands of the Western Himalayan region, as well as their relationship with the physicochemical parameters of soil. A total of 185 isolates were obtained using the culture-based technique belonging to Bacillus (37%), Micrococcus (16%), and Staphylococcus (7%). Targeted metagenomics revealed the abundance of bacterial phyla Pseudomonadota (23%) followed by Acidobacteriota (20.2%), Chloroflexota (15%), and Bacillota (11.3%). At the genera level, CandidatusUdaeobacter (6%), Subgroup_2 (5.5%) of phylum Acidobacteriota, and uncultured Ktedonobacterales HSB_OF53-F07 (5.2%) of Choloroflexota phylum were found to be preponderant. Mycobiome predominantly comprised of phyla Ascomycota (54.1%), Basidiomycota (24%), and Mortierellomycota (19.1%) with Archaeorhizomyces (19.1%), Mortierella (19.1%), and Russula (5.4%) being the most abundant genera. Spearman’s correlation revealed that the bacterial community was most influenced by total nitrogen in the soil followed by soil organic carbon as compared to other soil physicochemical factors. The study establishes a fundamental relationship between microbial communities and the physicochemical properties of soil. Furthermore, the study provides valuable insights into the complex interplay between biotic and abiotic factors that influence the microbial community composition of this unique region across various elevations.
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The sequences obtained from the high throughput sequencing effort were submitted to the NCBI database using the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) submission with the project number PRJNA931940.
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Acknowledgements
We are thankful to Namrata Jiya and Mrunal Karande for managing sample transportation.
Funding
This work was supported by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India (by Grant No. BT/Coord.II/01/03/2016), under the project Establishment of Centre for Excellence, National Centre for Microbial Resource (NCMR).
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AR: MS writing, data analysis. CV: isolation and identification of isolates. JMR, BSR, and SP: sample collection, soil analysis, MS writing. MJ: community DNA extraction and sequencing. CR: MS writing and data validation. KDP: sequence analysis of bacterial isolates and MS writing. AS: conceptualization, project administration, funding acquisition, supervision, MS writing.
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Rambia, A., Veluchamy, C., Rawat, J.M. et al. Revealing bacterial and fungal communities of the untapped forest and alpine grassland zones of the Western-Himalayan region. Int Microbiol 27, 781–795 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-023-00430-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-023-00430-5