Testing the contribution of dispersal to microbial succession following a wildfire

Given increased wildfirewildfire activity, there is growing interest in understanding the drivers of microbial succession after fire.fire. Dispersal may be especially important to post-firepost-fire succession as biotic communities can be more susceptible to invasion following a disturbance. Here, we experimentally manipulated dispersal into disturbed leaf litter communities collected following a wildfirewildfire and tracked bacterial and fungal dispersal assemblages over time. We show that the identity and source of microbes immigrating into the soil surface post-firepost-fire change across time with seasonal shifts and the reemergence of aboveground vegetation. Further, dispersal significantlysignificantly contributed to the reassembly of leaf litter microbial communities after the fire,fire, producing an increasingly distinct assembly trajectory. The effect of dispersal on alpha-diversity and beta-diversity was ecosystem dependent but, unexpectedly, influencedinfluenced bacterial and fungal communities in a similar manner within ecosystems. Collectively, these results demonstrate that dispersal explicitly alters the course of microbial community succession following a wildfirewildfire and may impact bacteria and fungi in parallel ways, despite differingdiffering in traits expected to alter dispersal patterns.

Automated summary

This study experimentally manipulated microbial dispersal in post-fire leaf litter communities and tracked the changes in bacterial and fungal communities over time. The results showed that dispersal played a significant role in the reassembly of microbial communities after the fire, and its effect varied with time and the reemergence of vegetation.