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Key microorganisms defining the microbial communities of an alpine legume-shrubland ecosystem on a volcanic island in natural and fire-affected soils

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Abstract

Background

Teide National Park (Canary Islands) is an alpine volcanic ecosystem with shrub vegetation in which legume Spartocytisus supranubius is the most characteristic key species for nitrogen input to the ecosystem.

Aims and methods

Bacterial and fungal communities in bulk and rhizosphere soils were analysed through high-throughput sequencing in undisturbed and wildfire-impacted areas to identify key microorganisms in burned and unburned soils.

Results

Microbial communities in undisturbed areas exhibited comparable diversity in bulk and rhizosphere soils, but differed in structure and composition. An unusual abundance of non-photosynthetic Chloroflexi from the oligotrotrophic class Ktedonobacteria dominated the bulk soils, surpassing Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria and Actinobacteria. The rhizosphere effect resulted in a microbiome with a more balanced abundance of these four phyla and enriched in potentially plant growth-promoting microorganisms. The impact of a wildfire on the shrub vegetation resulted in a microbial community, especially the fungal community, reduced in diversity and changed in structure and composition, with many of the most characteristic rhizosphere genera becoming vanished, while others took advantage of the postfire conditions and became predominant.

Conclusion

The microbial communities of Teide National Park in fire-affected soils, particularly in the rhizosphere environment of the legume shrubland are significantly altered two years after a wildfire, remaining far from unburned scenarios, suggesting a slow recovery in alpine ecosystem with dry volcanic soils. Pseudarthrobacter (Actinobacteria) and Coprinellus (Basidiomycota), the two most fire-favoured genera, are good indicators of fire severity and are proposed as bioindicators to monitor the recovery of the soil ecosystem.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed in the present study are publicly available in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under the BioProject number PRJNA914530.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento y Empleo, Gobierno de Canarias-Co-Financing Operational Program FEDER Canarias 2014-2020 (Grant ProID2020010103 to M.L.B.). Angel L. Lizano-Bastardín was the beneficiary of a research contract in the framework of the ProID2020010103 project.

Funding

This work was funded by Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento y Empleo, Gobierno de Canarias-Cofinancing Operational Program FEDER Canarias 2014–2020 (Grant ProID2020010103 to M.L.B.)

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Correspondence to Milagros León-Barrios.

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

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Responsible Editor: Hans Lambers.

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Fernández-González, A.J., Villadas, P.J., Díaz-Peña, F. et al. Key microorganisms defining the microbial communities of an alpine legume-shrubland ecosystem on a volcanic island in natural and fire-affected soils. Plant Soil 498, 651–670 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06465-x

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