4.6 Article

Landscape Topography and Regional Drought Alters Dust Microbiomes in the Sierra Nevada of California

Journal

FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 13, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.856454

Keywords

aeolian processes; Asian desert; bacteria; biogeochemistry; dispersal; fungi; montane; provenance

Categories

Funding

  1. National Science Foundation [1449197, 1744089, 1541047, 0725097, 1331939, 1239521, 2012878]
  2. U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project [CA-R-PPA5062-H]
  3. NSF [DBI-1429826]
  4. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research
  5. Environmental System Science program through the River Corridor, Scientific Focus Area project at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
  6. Royal Thai government fellowship
  7. National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health [U54MD013368]
  8. NIH [S10-OD016290]
  9. Directorate For Geosciences [1744089, 0725097] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
  10. Directorate For Geosciences
  11. Division Of Earth Sciences [1449197] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
  12. Division Of Earth Sciences [1744089, 0725097] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
  13. Division Of Earth Sciences
  14. Directorate For Geosciences [2012878] Funding Source: National Science Foundation

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Dust provides significant input of nutrients in ecosystems, and is also a vector for dispersing microorganisms. This study found that the composition and diversity of dust-associated microorganisms differ by elevation and are influenced by landscape topography and droughts in source areas.
Dust provides an ecologically significant input of nutrients, especially in slowly eroding ecosystems where chemical weathering intensity limits nutrient inputs from underlying bedrock. In addition to nutrient inputs, incoming dust is a vector for dispersing dust-associated microorganisms. While little is known about dust-microbial dispersal, dust deposits may have transformative effects on ecosystems far from where the dust was emitted. Using molecular analyses, we examined spatiotemporal variation in incoming dust microbiomes along an elevational gradient within the Sierra Nevada of California. We sampled throughout two dry seasons and found that dust microbiomes differed by elevation across two summer dry seasons (2014 and 2015), which corresponded to competing droughts in dust source areas. Dust microbial taxa richness decreased with elevation and was inversely proportional to dust heterogeneity. Likewise, dust phosphorus content increased with elevation. At lower elevations, early season dust microbiomes were more diverse than those found later in the year. The relative abundances of microbial groups shifted during the summer dry season. Furthermore, mutualistic fungal diversity increased with elevation, which may have corresponded with the biogeography of their plant hosts. Although dust fungal pathogen diversity was equivalent across elevations, elevation and sampling month interactions for the relative abundance, diversity, and richness of fungal pathogens suggest that these pathogens differed temporally across elevations, with potential implications for humans and wildlife. This study shows that landscape topography and droughts in source locations may alter the composition and diversity of ecologically relevant dust-associated microorganisms.

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