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Mowing effects on soil bacterial community assembly processes in a semiarid grassland

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Abstract

Background and Aims

Soil bacteria are essential in maintaining multiple grassland ecosystem functions that are significantly altered by mowing. Assembly processes govern bacterial community composition and in turn determine their functions. However, the ecological processes governing bacterial community assembly response to mowing remain largely unexplored.

Methods

In the present study, we characterized soil bacterial community assembly processes under different mowing intensities, including no mowing (CK), light mowing (LM, mowing annually with 8 cm stubble), moderate mowing (MM, mowing annually with 5 cm stubble), and heavy mowing (HM, mowing annually with 2 cm stubble) in typical grassland of Inner Mongolia. We further analyzed multiple environmental factors to explore the drivers of bacterial community assembly under different mowing intensities.

Results

Our results showed that stochastic processes primarily governed the bacterial community assembly in CK, LM, and HM; however, MM was governed by deterministic processes. Our research found that different mowing intensities did not visibly affect the bacterial α-diversity. However, MM and HM significantly altered the bacterial community's overall structure compared to the control. MM possessed the most complex and connective bacterial communities. Soil organic carbon (SOC) was the most critical environmental factor mediating the changes in bacterial community assembly processes induced by mowing. Increased SOC in MM worked as an ecological filter to deterministically select bacterial taxa (Streptomyces and RB41) with carbon metabolism-related function assembly.

Conclusions

Our findings showed that when the grass was mowed annually to a height of 5 cm, it increased the concentration of SOC and governed the deterministic assembly of bacterial communities in the semiarid grassland ecosystem. By studying these findings, we can better understand how bacterial communities support the long-term health of grassland ecosystems.

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Data availability

The datasets generated by the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

References

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia (No. 2020ZD03), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31861143001), and the Survey of basic resources of science and technology (No. 2019FY102004). We would like to thank Dr. Joseph Elliot at the University of Kansas for her assistance with English language and grammatical editing of the manuscript.

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Authors

Contributions

This study was originated from the research plan designed by Mengli Zhao and Bin Zhang. Jiahua Zheng led the feldwork with assistance of Qi Wang and Jirong Qiao. Jiahua Zheng, Feng Zhang, and Tianqi Zhao, conducted the lab experiments. Jiahua Zheng and Shaoyu Li conducted the data analyses. Jiahua Zheng led writing of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the final writing.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Bin Zhang or Mengli Zhao.

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Competing interests

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Conflict of interest

Authors declare that they have no known conflict of interest.

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Responsible Editor: Ruzhen Wang.

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Zheng, J., Wang, Q., Li, S. et al. Mowing effects on soil bacterial community assembly processes in a semiarid grassland. Plant Soil 493, 309–324 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06231-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06231-z

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