Effects of tourism development on ecological network and function of sediment microbial communities in the urban wetland park

Highlights

● Tourism development influenced the ecological network of microbial communities.

● Regulating mechanism of intra- and inter-domain networks was clarified.

● Macrophyte coverage reduces microbial network complexity and stability.

● Landscaping may promote nitrogen and phosphorus cycle in wetland watershed.

Abstract

Numerous urban wetland parks have been established, yet the understanding of microbial interactions in response to tourism development is still limited. This study aims to elucidate the impact of tourism development on the complexity and stability of molecular ecological networks within the microbial communities of wetland sediments. Through an analysis of sediments properties, microorganism intra- and inter-domain co-occurrence characteristics in three different wetland functional areas (conservation, landscaping, and recreation areas), we found that tourism development influenced sediment physicochemical properties. These changes regulated the diversity and ecological networks of archaeal and bacterial communities. Specifically, areas with landscaping (LA) exhibited reduced network connectivity and robustness, suggesting that macrophyte coverage diminishes the complexity and stability of microbial communities in wetland parks. Notably, the transition from conservation areas (CA) to LA strengthened the correlations between microbial network modules and sediment total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP), potentially enhancing the nitrogenand phosphorus cycles in wetlands. Structural equation modeling analysisrevealed that both abiotic factors (TC, TP, TN, K, Mg, pH) and biotic factors (archaeal and bacterial α-diversity) can influence interdomain network complexity, accounting for 42% of the variation. Among these factors, sediment TN exerted the largest positive effect on network complexity (37.9%), while Mg had the most negative impact (59.8%). This study provides valuable insights for ecological assessments of urban wetlands and can inform strategies for effective wetland ecosystem management.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

urban wetlands / tourism development / microbial communities / interdomain interactions / network complexity

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. LTGS24D010004), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42307064), and the Fundamental Research Funds for Climbing Project from Hangzhou Normal University (Grant Nos. 4305C50223204097 and 4305C52724101001).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42832-024-0249-z and is accessible for authorized users.

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