Nitrogen-based fertilizers differentially affect protist community composition in paddy field soils

Highlights

● Nitrogen fertilizers’ effects on protists in three paddy field soils were analyzed.

● Different nitrogen fertilizers had distinctive effects on the protist communities.

● The effect of nitrogen fertilizers on protist communities slightly depended on the soil types.

● Predatory protists were the main groups that were affected by nitrogen fertilizers.

Abstract

Protists are one of the most diverse and dominant microbial groups and they play critical roles in the soil ecosystem. Although nitrogen fertilizers have a profound impact on protist communities, still less is known about how different nitrogen fertilizer types affect protist community composition in different soil types. Here we investigated the effects of six inorganic nitrogen fertilizers (urea, ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulfate, potassium nitrate, ammonium chloride, and diammonium hydrogen phosphate) and an organic fertilizer (a mixture of rice husk and cow manure) on protist community composition in three paddy field soils using a high-throughput sequencing method. The effect of the fertilizers on the functional groups of protists, namely consumers (predators and decomposers), photoautotrophs, and parasites (plant pathogens and animal parasites) was also analyzed. The results showed that nitrogen fertilizers had distinctive effects on the beta diversity of the protists, while we also observed that the same fertilizer had slightly different effects depending on the soil type. Amoebozoa and Rhizaria were the most affected protist taxonomical groups, while predatory protists were the main functional groups that were affected by nitrogen fertilizers. Random forest analysis showed that most of the fertilizer-affected protists were predators, among which Cercozoa was the most affected taxa. In conclusion, our results provide important insights into the impact of nitrogen fertilizers on soil protist communities.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

nitrogen fertilizer / bottom-up / paddy field / predatory protist / soil protist community

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to Asiloglu Rasit (JP22K14804).

Data availability

The raw sequence data obtained in this study have been deposited in the NCBI database under the BioProject ID PRJNA1009153.

Ethics approval

Not applicable.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing or financial interests.

Authors contributions

RA and SBO designed the study with the advice of KS and NH. SBO and SOS performed the laboratory work and high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics. SBO and RA interpreted the results and prepared the manuscript. KS and NH provided feedback and comments. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42832-023-0221-3 and is accessible for authorized users.

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