Assembly processes of bacterial and fungal community differ between desert and oasis habitats in an arid inland river basin, northwest China

Abstract

SummaryOasis habitat play a critical role in arid areas, yet little is known about microbial community assembly processes and its differences in oasis and desert habitat in arid inland river basin.Herein, using 21 and 18 sample data respectively collected from oasis and desert habitats at the lower reaches of Heihe River, northwest China, we examined the assembly processes of soil bacterial and fungal communities and revealed the driving factors affecting the relative contributions of deterministic and stochastic processes.We found that deterministic processes, especially variable selection, dominated bacterial community assembly in oasis habitat, while stochastic processes were more important in desert habitat. By contrast, stochastic processes dominated fungal community assembly both in oasis and desert habitats, in which dispersal limitation played a more important role. Environmental (e.g. EC) and biotic factors (microbial species associations) significantly mediated the bacterial community assembly. However, both environmental and biotic factors had little/no effects on fungal community assembly.This study highlights the soil microbial community assembly is habitat- and taxon-dependent, and environmental (EC) and biotic factors play an important role in regulating these assembly processes in arid inland river basin.