Biology subjects

Revillini, D.

Publications and source records attributed to Revillini, D..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

The microbial landscape: soil microbiome properties predict plant species distributions

Plant species distributions are shaped by interactions with the abiotic and biotic environment. Despite the known importance of soil microbiomes in shaping plant diversity and function, no study has explicitly determined the ability of the soil microbiome to predict plant species distributions at large scales. We employed paired above- and belowground surveys of plant occurrence and soil microbial taxa and functions across habitat patches (n = 676), applying machine-learning-based distribution modeling to identify the relative influence of the soil microbiome and environmental attributes in predicting plant species (n = 50) distributions across the landscape. We discovered that while abiotic gradients of known importance in this ecosystem were the strongest predictors of many plant species distributions, microbial predictors could have similar or greater influence. Microbiome predictors were collectively more important than abiotic environmental variables for 38% of plant species in this study and explained >70% of the predicted distribution for one species. We identified four microbiome attributes of landscape-scale importance for predicting plant species distributions including prokaryotic richness, fungal richness, the abundance of fungal pathogens, and the abundance of prokaryotic phosphate transport genes in soil. Our findings reveal a previously underappreciated role of the soil microbiome in shaping plant species distributions at a landscape scale, with implications for plant community structure in the context of both ecosystem restoration and future global change.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

50-year fire legacy regulates soil microbial carbon and nutrient cycling responses to new fire

Fire disturbances are becoming more common, more intense, and further-reaching across the globe, with consequences for ecosystem functioning. Importantly, fire can have strong effects on the soil microbiome, including community and functional changes after fire, but surprisingly little is known regarding the role of soil fire legacy in shaping responses to recent fire. To address this gap, we conducted a manipulative field experiment administering fire across 32 soils with varying fire legacies, including combinations of 1-7 historic fires and 1-33 years since most recent fire. We analyzed soil metatranscriptomes, determining for the first time how fire and fire legacy interactively affect metabolically-active soil taxa, the microbial regulation of important carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycling, expression of carbohydrate-cycling enzyme pathways, and functional gene co-expression networks. Experimental fire strongly downregulated fungal activity while upregulating many bacterial and archaeal phyla. Further, fire decreased soil capacity for microbial C and N cycling and P transport, and drastically rewired functional gene co-expression. Perhaps most importantly, we highlight a novel role of soil fire legacy in regulation of microbial C, N, and P responses to recent fire. We observed a greater number of functional genes responsive to the interactive effects of fire and fire legacy than those affected solely by recent fire, indicating that many functional genes respond to fire only under certain fire legacy contexts. Therefore, without incorporating fire legacy of soils, studies will miss important ways that fire shapes microbial roles in ecosystem functioning. Finally, we showed that fire caused significant downregulation of carbon metabolism and nutrient cycling genes in microbiomes under abnormal soil fire histories, producing a novel warning for the future: human manipulation of fire legacies, either indirectly through global change-induced fire intensification or directly through fire suppression, can negatively impact soil microbiome functional responses to new fires.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2023

Multidimensional specialization and generalization are pervasive in soil prokaryotes with generalists dominating communities and specialists more central in networks

Habitat specialization underpins biological processes from species distributions to speciation. However, organisms are often described as specialists or generalists based on a single niche axis, despite facing complex, multidimensional environments. Here, we analyzed 236 prokaryotic communities across the United States demonstrating for the first time that 90% of >1,200 prokaryotes followed one of two trajectories: specialization on all niche axes (multidimensional specialization) or generalization on all axes (multidimensional generalization). We then documented that this pervasive multidimensional specialization/generalization had a wide range of ecological and evolutionary consequences. First, multidimensional specialization and generalization are highly conserved with very few transitions between these two trajectories. Second, multidimensional generalists dominated communities because they were 73 times more abundant than specialists. Lastly, multidimensional specialists played important roles in community structure with [~]220% more connections in microbiome networks. These results indicate that multidimensional generalization and specialization are evolutionarily stable with multidimensional generalists supporting larger populations and multidimensional specialists playing important roles within communities likely stemming from their overrepresentation among pollutant detoxifiers and nutrient cyclers. Taken together, we demonstrate that the vast majority of soil prokaryotes are restricted to one of two multidimensional niche trajectories, multidimensional specialization or multidimensional generalization, which then has far-reaching consequences for evolutionary transitions, microbial dominance, and community roles. One-Sentence SummaryPervasive multidimensional specialization and generalization impacts evolutionary trajectories, microbial dominance, and community roles.

microbiology↗