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Species-Abundance Distributions of Soil Ciliates on Different Aspects in Alpine Meadows of Gannan, China

  • SOIL BIOLOGY
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Abstract

Species-abundance distribution (SAD) is essential in understanding the formation and maintenance mechanisms of species diversity. In alpine meadows, aspect affects almost all biological and ecological processes. Therefore, the soil ciliate data obtained by Illumina MiSeq sequencing were used to explore the characteristics of SADs to the soil ciliate communities on different aspects in alpine meadows (south aspect, southwest aspect, west aspect, northwest aspect, north aspect; SA, SWA, WA, NWA, NA, respectively). Statistical models: Log-series model (LSM) and Log-normal model (LNORM), Niche models: Broken stick model (BSM) and Geometric series model (GSM), and a neutral theory model: Meta-community zero-sum multinomial distribution model (MZSM) were selected to fit the soil ciliate data for analysis. The results showed that: (1) the number of common species increased and then decreased from SA to NA, the number of rare species changed in the opposite trend; (2) BSM and GSM were able to fit the SAD of overall soil ciliates species on different aspects, while MZSM was rejected on all aspects, indicating that the niche process dominated the formation of soil ciliate communities in the alpine meadows, and the resource allocation pattern was dominated by fixed allocation; (3) best-fit models for common species were GSM and BSM which were consistent with best-fit models for all species, while the best-fit model for rare species was LNORM, common species dominated the formation of SAD on different aspects and had an irreplaceable role in maintaining community productivity and stability.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We sincerely appreciate the Research Station of Alpine Meadow and Wetland Ecosystems of Lanzhou University for providing the field experiment site. We also thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31760135), the Gansu Provincial Natural Science Foundation (20JR10RA089), and the Gansu Provincial Forestry and grassland science and technology innovation (KJCX2021005) for providing financial support.

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  1. College of Geography and Environmental Science, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China

    Chunliang Yang, Minxia Liu & Xiaowen Wang

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Chunliang Yang: conceptualization, writing-original draft; Minxia Liu: funding acquisition, review, and editing; Xiaowen Wang: methodology, software.

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Correspondence to Minxia Liu.

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Yang, C., Liu, M. & Wang, X. Species-Abundance Distributions of Soil Ciliates on Different Aspects in Alpine Meadows of Gannan, China. Eurasian Soil Sc. 56 (Suppl 2), S325–S336 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1064229323602044

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