ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Terrestrial Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1592901
This article is part of the Research TopicBiogeochemical Processes of Nutrients: Impacts of Global Changes and Human Activities on Microbial Communities in Terrestrial EcosystemsView all articles
Land use changes alter microbial functional gene diversity and its relationship with soil ecosystem multifunctionality in a subtropical estuary
Provisionally accepted
- Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China
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Land use change in coastal wetlands is often associated with microbial diversity and function, which plays a crucial role in mediating soil ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF). However, the linkage between microbial functional genes and soil EMF under different land uses requires further investigation. This study investigated the relative abundance and community structure of microbial functional genes associated with carbon (C), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and sulfur (S) cycling and their relationship with soil EMF across five different land uses (reed wetland, tidal flat, grassland, agricultural land and fallow land) in the Min River Estuary using highthroughput quantitative PCR technique. Results showed that microbial functional gene composition changed significantly across different land uses. Soil electrical conductivity (EC) ranged from 5.73 mS/cm (tidal flat) to 0.29 mS/cm (fallow land), driving significant shifts in microbial functional gene composition. Soil EMF exhibited a U-shaped trend, starting with a decrease from reed wetland to tidal flat, reaching its lowest in grassland, and then increasing towards agricultural land, with the highest values observed in fallow land. Random forest analysis indicated that soil EC as the most influential environmental factor shaping microbial functional gene compositions, while functional gene richness directly correlated with EMF. Notably, soil EC modulates the relationship between microbial functional gene compositions and EMF.These findings enhance our understanding of soil EMF variations across different coastal land uses and underscore the need to integrate microbial functionality into coastal wetland management.
Keywords: Coastal wetland, Ecosystem multifunctionality, land use, Microbial functional genes, Salinity
Received: 13 Mar 2025; Accepted: 15 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, zhang, Jin, Yu and Shen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ju-pei Shen, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China
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