Journal
MICROORGANISMS
Volume 10, Issue 5, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/microorganisms10051025
Keywords
earthworm microbiome; gut transit; earthworm cast; alpha diversity; metacommunity; soil microbiome
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Funding
- Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad [AGL2017-86813-R]
- UE program H2020 [LABPLAS_101003954]
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Earthworms heavily modify the soil microbiome as they pass through their guts, with unique bacterial populations present in the soil, gut, and casts. This study highlights the importance of understanding soil microbial communities and their dynamics in nutrient cycles.
Earthworms heavily modify the soil microbiome as it passes throughout their guts. However, there are no detailed studies describing changes in the composition, structure and diversity of soil microbiomes during gut transit and once they are released back to the soil as casts. To address this knowledge gap, we used 16S rRNA next-generation sequencing to characterize the microbiomes of soil, gut and casts from the earthworm Aporrectodea caliginosa. We also studied whether these three microbiomes are clearly distinct in composition or can be merged into metacommunities. A large proportion of bacteria was unique to each microbiome-soil (82%), gut (89%) and casts (75%), which indicates that the soil microbiome is greatly modified during gut transit. The three microbiomes also differed in alpha diversity, which peaked during gut transit and decreased in casts. Furthermore, gut transit also modified the structure of the soil microbiome, which clustered away from those of the earthworm gut and cast samples. However, this clustering pattern was not supported by metacommunity analysis, which indicated that soil and gut samples make up one metacommunity and cast samples another. These results have important implications for understanding the dynamics of soil microbial communities and nutrient cycles.
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