Influence of Interspecies Interactions on Bacterial Community Assembly in the Active and Permafrost Layers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Abstract

Bacterial communities play a crucial role in permafrost biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem function maintenance. Bacterial interaction is one of the main factors in shaping soil bacterial communities. However, how would bacterial interaction influence the bacterial communities in permafrost of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) remains largely unknown. Here we collected paired soil samples from both the active and permafrost layers of two typical QTP permafrost regions in October 2020 for Tuotuohe River (TTH) and May 2022 for Aerjin (ARJ), and investigated the bacterial communities and the role of interactions in structuring the bacterial community and its assembly process through amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Our study revealed distinct bacterial communities, with significant differences in the relative abundances of Proteobacteria (P < 0.05), Acidobacteriota (P < 0.001), Bacteroidota (P < 0.05), and Planctomycetota (P < 0.001) between the active layer and the permafrost layer. More importantly, we found that interspecies interactions, including both positive and negative associations, were strongly correlated with bacterial alpha-diversity and played a significant role in community variation and assembly process. Our findings also showed that the community assembly in both the active and permafrost layers was primarily driven by homogeneous selection of deterministic processes, with interspecies interactions accounting for more than 58% and 63% of all assembly mechanisms, respectively. This is the first study to quantify the contribution of bacterial interactions in shaping the bacterial community and its assembly process in permafrost of QTP, highlighting the importance of considering interspecies interactions in future modeling efforts. Our work also emphasizes the necessity of including interspecies interactions in microbial process projections to reduce uncertainty.

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