We are excited to have our study just published in Nature Communications. This study is led by Dr. Ang Hu, and focuses on the associations between dissolved organic matter (DOM) and microbes. Briefly, we developed a new approach by considering the ecological networks of DOM and microbes and null models to quantify their interactions. We then applied this new approach to our samples collected from the two mountains in China and Norway in 2013. A good point here is that our mechanisms obtained could be applicable to our real world such as the Taihu Lake for its carbon dynamics since the drinking water crisis in 2007. This study confirms that we can go further for this interesting and important topic.
Here comes the abstract of this study:
Microbes regulate the composition and turnover of organic matter. Here we developed a framework called Energy-Diversity-Trait integrative Analysis to quantify how dissolved organic matter and microbes interact along global change drivers of temperature and nutrient enrichment. Negative and positive interactions suggest decomposition and production processes of organic matter, respectively. We applied this framework to manipulative field experiments on mountainsides in subarctic and subtropical climates. In both climates, negative interactions of bipartite networks were more specialized than positive interactions, showing fewer interactions between chemical molecules and bacterial taxa. Nutrient enrichment promoted specialization of positive interactions, but decreased specialization of negative interactions, indicating that organic matter was more vulnerable to decomposition by a greater range of bacteria, particularly at warmer temperatures in the subtropical climate. These two global change drivers influenced specialization of negative interactions most strongly via molecular traits, while molecular traits and bacterial diversity similarly affected specialization of positive interactions.
A brief introduction in Chinese could be found by following the link below;
http://www.niglas.cas.cn/xwdt_1_1/yjjz/202207/t20220702_6470567.html
Reference:
Hu, A., M. Choi, A. J. Tanentzap, J. Liu, K. S. Jang, J. T. Lennon, Y. Liu, J. Soininen, X. Lu, Y. Zhang, J. Shen, and J. Wang. 2022. Ecological networks of dissolved organic matter and microorganisms under global change. Nature Communications 13:3600. Full text
