4.2 Reduced interactivity lead to T.matsutake extinction
Interactions among community members are an important contributor to
community stability and species diversity (Mougi & Kondoh, 2012, Haleet al. , 2020). The interactions could be cooperation and
competition in metabolism, immune, stress tolerance, and appeared as
positive or negative interactions (Mougi & Kondoh, 2012).
As interactivity within the soil
microbial community decreased during degradation, T.matsutakelost cooperative interactions (Fig.3C) that may have been capable of
enhancing the rates of certain ecological processes (Corbett & Watkin,
2018, Cui et al. , 2019), stimulating energy conservation by
individual members (Malik et al. , 2018), and even allowing the
coexistence of certain species (Cai et al. , 2020). The loss of
cooperation increases the cost of survival for that species. We found
that T.matsutake was marginalized from a central module to a
peripheral one within the networks (Fig.2B). As a module is a collection
of members (nodes) that are potentially highly functionally related
(Deng & Zhou, 2015), this indicated that T.matsutake could not
rely on the original functional groups for metabolic cooperation, and
resulted in extinction. (Gill et al. , 2000, Xu et al. ,
2015). Thus, our result support the hypothesis that loss of cooperation
due to reduced interactivity of the microbial community was responsible
for the extinction of T.matsutake (Gill et al. , 2000, Xuet al. , 2015). This was further confirmed by regression analysis
that showed the extent of T.matsutake extinction was most
linearly correlated to network interaction indicators than to soil
properties, community composition or biodiversity (Fig.4).
However, our study found that all of the 13 OTUs that competed withT.matsutake had also decreased in their relative abundance during
degradation, which indicated that groups with functions similar toT.matsutake were also facing
the threat of extinction due to
environmental stress. Competition also contributes to community
stability as it is involved in resource partitioning and functional
redundancy among community members (Pianka, 1981, Pinsky, 2019). The
community could retain functional stability by trade-offs between the
functions of several phylogenetic groups under stress (Pianka, 1981,
Pinsky, 2019). Thus, it became an open question as to whether the
community possessed any other groups that could functionally replaceT.matsutake and its competitors. As the ectomycorrhizal species
of the keystone plant (Gill et al. , 2000), T.matsutake and
its competitors were helpful for maintaining the dominance of the host
plant by assisting in nutrient uptake and defense against stress and
disease (Liang et al. , 2020). Over the long term, the extinction
of T.matsutake and its competitors are a potential threat to
keystone vegetation and even other animals that inhabit the local
environment (Gill et al. , 2000, Weisskopf et al. , 2021).
In summary, the microbial community, during the degradation ofT.matsutake , was demostrated variation in composition and
diversity, and a switch from an
interactive state where metabolite and signal functions predominated to
stress tolerance state. The decreased interactivity marginalizedT.matsutake from a large center module to a peripheral module and
reduced its interactions, leading to its extinction. The extinction
caused by the degradation of microbial
community directly impacts the
ecosystem and is a potential long term threat to aboveground
biodiversity through rhizosphere activity and the food-web. This study
highlights that the key characteristic of microbial community
degradation and the mechanism for microbial species extinction during
degradation is the reduced interactivity. For future studies focusing on
conservation and on microbial community, an understanding of the
relationships among stress, microbial community properties, and the
extent of the microbial community degradation, will allow for improved
comprehensive conservation measures that target both below- and
above-ground communities.