Collembolans accelerate the dispersal of antibiotic resistance genes in the soil ecosystem

Abstract

Soils have become an important sink for antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). To better understand the impacts of ARGs on the soil ecosystem, the transport of ARGs is a basic question. So far, however, the role of soil animals in the dispersal of ARGs is not understood. Here, two treatments (without collembolans and with collembolans) were established, each treatment included unamended and manure-amended soil, and soil samples were collected at 14, 28 and 56 days after incubation. The effects of the collembolan Folsomia candida on dispersal of ARGs in the soil ecosystem were explored using high-throughput qPCR combined with Illumina sequencing. As the culture time increased, more shared ARGs and OTUs were detected between the unamended and manured soil, especially in the treatment with collembolans. Vancomycin, aminoglycoside and MLSB genes may have been more readily transported by the collembolan. On the 28th day after incubation, a high abundance of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) was found in the treatment with collembolans. These results clearly reveal that collembolans can accelerate the dispersal of ARGs in the soil ecosystem. Procrustes analysis and the Mantel test both indicate that soil bacterial communities were significantly correlated with ARG profiles. Furthermore, partial redundancy analysis indicates that soil bacterial communities can explain 41.28% of the variation in ARGs. These results suggest that the change of soil microbial community have an important contribution to the dispersal of ARGs by the collembolan.

Keywords

Soil fauna / High-throughput qPCR / Microbial community / Mobile genetic elements / Lllumina sequencing

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41571130063), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB15020302 and XDB15020402) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China-International collaborative project from Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant No. 2017YFE0107300).

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42832-019-0002-1 and is accessible for authorized users.

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