Long-term inorganic fertilizer exposure disturbed functional traits and gut bacterial conditionally rare or abundant taxa in collembolan (Entomobrya proxima Folsom)

Highlights

	● The inorganic fertilizer addition with a low amount promoted the elongation of some functional traits of Entomobrya proxima .
	● The conditionally rare or abundant taxa were more susceptible to the disturbance of inorganic fertilizer than abundant taxa in the gut of Entomobrya proxima .
	● Multiple dominant genera in the conditionally rare or abundant taxa have the potential to indicate the changes of functional traits of Entomobrya proxima .

Abstract

The functional traits of soil fauna are closely related to ecosystem functions. The gut microbiota, which can reflect environmental changes, may be associated with functional traits. Therefore, in this study, collembolan (Entomobrya proxima) was used to clarify the linkage response of specific gut taxa and traits under long-term urea exposure. A small amount of urea had positive effects on functional traits of E. proxima. Chao1 and Shannon indices of gut bacteria conditionally rare or abundant taxa (CRAT) gradually decreased under low and medium fertilizer, while increased under high fertilizer. Shannon index of abundant taxa (AT) showed a similar trend to that of CRAT except that the value of Shannon index was higher at high fertilizer than that of medium treatments. The structure and community assembly of CRAT changed significantly, and with the increase of urea addition amount, the dominant mechanism of community assembly changed from a deterministic process to a stochastic process. The niche width of AT and CRAT decreased. Relative abundance of some genera in AT and CRAT was closely related to functional traits. In conclusion, CRAT was more sensitive to urea than AT, had the potential to characterize functional traits of E. proxima, which will provide a basis for predicting the changes of soil animal traits and functions under the change of agricultural fertilizer strategy in the future.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

collembolan / functional traits / intestinal bacterial community / AT / CRAT

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Author contributions

Xinyue Yang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing—original draft preparation, Writing—review and editing, Visualization. Gang Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Writing—review and editing, Supervision. Weiming Xiu: Writing—review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Project administration. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Scientific and Technological Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Grant No. CAASZDRW202408).

Data availability statement

No data was used for the research described in the article. The sequencing data were submitted to NCBI under Bio Project PRJNA1196609.

Institutional review board statement

This study did not require ethical approval; all data are available in the public domain. The collected Entomobrya proxima does not fall within the protection scope stipulated in the Wildlife Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China.

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