Plants Decrease Network Complexity and Increase Environmental Stability of Microbial Communities, Shifting the Dominant Environmental Controls from Carbon-Related Factors to pH in Newly Formed Wetlands

Soil microorganisms are crucial regulators of wetland ecological functions and are significantly influenced by plants. However, the ecological patterns underlying soil microbial responses to plants during wetland restoration remain poorly understood. Soil samples from sections with and without plants in each wetland were collected to investigate the impact of plants on soil microbial communities using high-throughput absolute quantification sequencing and analysis of soil physicochemical properties. Results showed that environmental drivers exerted stronger effects on microbial communities in areas without plants. Soil microbial networks in areas without plants were more complex and stable, while plants enhanced the contribution of stochastic processes to microbial community assembly. In areas with plants, pH was the most important environmental driver of soil microbial community variations, while organic carbon was the primary driver in areas without plants. Moreover, bacteria exhibited higher sensitivity than fungi to the same environmental variation in both areas with and without plants. In summary, our findings elucidate the responses of soil microbial ecological patterns to plants in newly formed wetlands, while emphasizing that the major environmental drivers of soil microbial communities are influenced by plants. This study provides important implications for enhancing wetland restoration efficiency.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Water

• Publication date

  2025-10-24

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3390/w17213054
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Assembly processes and networks of soil microbial communities along karst forest succession

  2025cited by this paper
• Karst wetland litter alters soil microbial community structure and metabolic activity

  2025cited by this paper
• Steering plant-soil feedback for sustainable agriculture.

  2025cited by this paper
• Soil depth affects bacterial, but not fungal community structure and assembly in Robinia pseudoacacia plantations

  2025cited by this paper
• The microbial network exhibits higher complexity in the rhizosphere than in bulk soils along elevational gradients in the alpine forests

  2025cited by this paper
• Vegetation succession enhances microbial diversity, network complexity, and stability in coastal wetlands, underscoring the pivotal role of soil salinity and key microbial species.

  2025cited by this paper
• Fungi as a Critical Component of Lake Microbiota in Response to Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms.

  2025cited by this paper
• Intertwined Relationship Between Soil pH and Microbes in Biogeography

  2025cited by this paper
• Nitrogen deposition decouples grassland plant community from soil bacterial and fungal communities along a precipitation gradient

  2025cited by this paper
• Differential roles of deterministic and stochastic processes in structuring soil bacterial ecotypes across terrestrial ecosystems

  2025cited by this paper
• Soil microbial communities in dry and moist tropical forests exhibit distinct shifts in community composition but not diversity with succession

  2025cited by this paper
• Coastal wetland resilience through local, regional and global conservation

  2025cited by this paper
• Responses of Subsoil Organic Carbon to Climate Warming and Cooling Is Determined by Microbial Community Rather Than Its Molecular Composition.

  2025cited by this paper
• Natural succession and artificial management have different effects on soil microbial ecological patterns in wetland resulting from land-use change

  2025cited by this paper
• Simplified microbial network reduced microbial structure stability and soil functionality in alpine grassland along a natural aridity gradient

  2024cited by this paper
• Community assembly of organisms regulates soil microbial functional potential through dual mechanisms

  2024cited by this paper
• Spatial pattern of critical wetland patches and its influencing factors in a coastal area, North China.

  2024cited by this paper
• Microbial necromass carbon contributed to soil organic carbon accumulation and stabilization in the newly formed inland wetlands.

  2024cited by this paper
• Promoting effect of plant diversity on soil microbial functionality is amplified over time

  2024cited by this paper
• The Impact of Microbial Interactions on Ecosystem Function Intensifies Under Stress.

  2024cited by this paper
• Differential spatial responses and assembly mechanisms of soil microbial communities across region-scale Taiga ecosystems.

  2024cited by this paper
• Plant diversity drives positive microbial associations in the rhizosphere enhancing carbon use efficiency in agricultural soils

  2024cited by this paper
• Elevating water table reduces net ecosystem carbon losses from global drained wetlands

  2024cited by this paper
• Microbial resistance and resilience to drought across a European climate gradient

  2024cited by this paper
• Environmentally dependent interactions shape patterns in gene content across natural microbiomes

  2024cited by this paper
• Microbial diversity and keystone species drive soil nutrient cycling and multifunctionality following mangrove restoration.

  2024cited by this paper
• Ecological restoration of coastal wetlands in China: Current status and suggestions

  2024cited by this paper
• Climate and soil properties shape latitudinal patterns of soil extracellular enzyme activity and stoichiometry: Evidence from Southwest China

  2024cited by this paper
• Soil microbial subcommunity assembly mechanisms are highly variable and intimately linked to their ecological and functional traits

  2024cited by this paper
• Seasonality and assembly of soil microbial communities in coastal salt marshes invaded by a perennial grass.

  2023cited by this paper
• Divergent rhizosphere and non‐rhizosphere soil microbial structure and function in long‐term warmed steppe due to altered root exudation

  2023cited by this paper
• Soil labile organic carbon fractions mediate microbial community assembly processes during long‐term vegetation succession in a semiarid region

  2023cited by this paper
• The interplay between microbial communities and soil properties

  2023cited by this paper
• Changes of soil bacterial community, network structure, and carbon, nitrogen and sulfur functional genes under different land use types

  2023cited by this paper
• Microbially mediated climate feedbacks from wetland ecosystems

  2023cited by this paper
• The extent and drivers of global wetland loss

  2023cited by this paper
• Extensive global wetland loss over the past three centuries

  2023cited by this paper
• Changes in soil bacterial community along a gradient of permafrost degradation in Northeast China

  2023cited by this paper
• Recovering wetland biogeomorphic feedbacks to restore the world’s biotic carbon hotspots

  2022cited by this paper
• Rhizosphere bacteriome structure and functions

  2022cited by this paper
• Linking soil fungi to bacterial community assembly in arid ecosystems

  2022cited by this paper
• ggClusterNet: An R package for microbiome network analysis and modularity‐based multiple network layouts

  2022cited by this paper
• Soil microbial network complexity predicts ecosystem function along elevation gradients on the Tibetan Plateau

  2022cited by this paper
• Divergent changes in particulate and mineral-associated organic carbon upon permafrost thaw

  2022cited by this paper
• Defending Earth’s terrestrial microbiome

  2022cited by this paper
• Landscape pattern changes and its drivers inferred from salt marsh plant variations in the coastal wetlands of the Liao River Estuary, China

  2022cited by this paper
• Deciphering factors driving soil microbial life‐history strategies in restored grasslands

  2022cited by this paper
• Changes of bacterial communities in restored Phragmites australis wetlands indicate the improvement of soil in the Yellow River Delta

  2022cited by this paper
• Changes in assembly processes of soil microbial communities during secondary succession in two subtropical forests

  2021cited by this paper
• Soil enzymes as indicators of soil function: A step toward greater realism in microbial ecological modeling

  2021cited by this paper
• Strong priming of soil organic matter induced by frequent input of labile carbon

  2021cited by this paper
• Rebound in China’s coastal wetlands following conservation and restoration

  2021cited by this paper
• Environmental vulnerability of the global ocean epipelagic plankton community interactome

  2021cited by this paper
• Unraveling negative biotic interactions determining soil microbial community assembly and functioning

  2021cited by this paper
• Exotic Spartina alterniflora Loisel. Invasion significantly shifts soil bacterial communities with the successional gradient of saltmarsh in eastern China

  2020cited by this paper
• Global blue carbon accumulation in tidal wetlands increases with climate change

  2020cited by this paper
• A quantitative framework reveals ecological drivers of grassland microbial community assembly in response to warming

  2020cited by this paper
• Plant–microbiome interactions: from community assembly to plant health

  2020cited by this paper
• Using soil bacterial communities to predict physico-chemical variables and soil quality

  2020cited by this paper
• Changes in soil microbial community structure during long‐term secondary succession

  2020cited by this paper
• Cover cropping and no-till increase diversity and symbiotroph:saprotroph ratios of soil fungal communities

  2019cited by this paper
• Fungal-bacterial diversity and microbiome complexity predict ecosystem functioning

  2019cited by this paper
• Conceptualizing soil organic matter into particulate and mineral‐associated forms to address global change in the 21st century

  2019cited by this paper
• Reproducible, interactive, scalable and extensible microbiome data science using QIIME 2

  2019cited by this paper
• Rhizosphere size and shape: Temporal dynamics and spatial stationarity

  2019cited by this paper
• Systems Biology of Plant-Microbiome Interactions.

  2019cited by this paper
• Towards a global model for wetlands ecosystem services

  2019cited by this paper
• Soil bacterial community structure in Chinese wetlands

  2019cited by this paper
• Coastal halophytes alter properties and microbial community structure of the saline soils in the Yellow River Delta, China

  2019cited by this paper
• Amino sugars as specific indices for fungal and bacterial residues in soil

  2018cited by this paper
• Future response of global coastal wetlands to sea-level rise

  2018cited by this paper
• Soil microbial moisture dependences and responses to drying–rewetting: The legacy of 18 years drought

  2018cited by this paper
• Embracing the unknown: disentangling the complexities of the soil microbiome

  2017cited by this paper
• Soil Bacterial and Fungal Communities Show Distinct Recovery Patterns during Forest Ecosystem Restoration

  2017cited by this paper
• Ancestral alliances: Plant mutualistic symbioses with fungi and bacteria

  2017cited by this paper
• A method for simultaneous measurement of soil bacterial abundances and community composition via 16S rRNA gene sequencing

  2016cited by this paper
• DADA2: High resolution sample inference from Illumina amplicon data

  2016cited by this paper
• Effectiveness of ecological rescue for altered soil microbial communities and functions

  2016cited by this paper
• piecewiseSEM: Piecewise structural equation modelling in r for ecology, evolution, and systematics

  2015cited by this paper
• Relating belowground microbial composition to the taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional trait distributions of trees in a tropical forest.

  2015cited by this paper
• Belowground biodiversity and ecosystem functioning

  2014cited by this paper
• Taxonomical and functional microbial community selection in soybean rhizosphere

  2014cited by this paper
• Strong coupling of plant and fungal community structure across western Amazonian rainforests

  2013cited by this paper
• Going back to the roots: the microbial ecology of the rhizosphere

  2013cited by this paper
• The SILVA and “All-species Living Tree Project (LTP)” taxonomic frameworks

  2013cited by this paper
• Conversion of the Amazon rainforest to agriculture results in biotic homogenization of soil bacterial communities

  2012cited by this paper
• Stochastic and deterministic assembly processes in subsurface microbial communities

  2012cited by this paper
• Soil bacterial and fungal communities across a pH gradient in an arable soil

  2010cited by this paper
• Priming effects : interactions between living and dead organic matter

  2010cited by this paper
• Stoichiometry of soil enzyme activity at global scale.

  2008cited by this paper
• UNITE: a database providing web-based methods for the molecular identification of ectomycorrhizal fungi.

  2005cited by this paper
• Gas chromatographic determination of muramic acid, glucosamine, mannosamine, and galactosamine in soils

  1996cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.