AUTHOR=Yan Qi , Deng Jianming , Wang Feng , Liu Yongqin , Liu Keshao TITLE=Community Assembly and Co-occurrence Patterns Underlying the Core and Satellite Bacterial Sub-communities in the Tibetan Lakes JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology VOLUME=12 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.695465 DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2021.695465 ISSN=1664-302X ABSTRACT=

Microbial communities normally comprise a few core species and large numbers of satellite species. These two sub-communities have different ecological and functional roles in natural environments, but knowledge on the assembly processes and co-occurrence patterns of the core and satellite species in Tibetan lakes is still sparse. Here, we investigated the ecological processes and co-occurrence relationships of the core and satellite bacterial sub-communities in the Tibetan lakes via 454 sequencing of 16S rRNA gene. Our studies indicated that the core and satellite bacterial sub-communities have similar dominant phyla (Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria). But the core sub-communities were less diverse and exhibited a stronger distance-decay relationship than the satellite sub-communities. In addition, topological properties of nodes in the network demonstrated that the core sub-communities had more complex and stable co-occurrence associations and were primarily driven by stochastic processes (58.19%). By contrast, the satellite sub-communities were mainly governed by deterministic processes (62.17%). Overall, this study demonstrated the differences in the core and satellite sub-community assembly and network stability, suggesting the importance of considering species traits to understand the biogeographic distribution of bacterial communities in high-altitude lakes.