Data from: The core microbiome bonds the Alpine bog vegetation to a transkingdom metacommunity

Bog ecosystems fulfil important functions in Earth's carbon and water turnover. While plant communities and their keystone species Sphagnum have been well-studied, less is known about the microbial communities associated with them. In order to study our hypothesis that bog plants share an essential core of their microbiome despite their different phylogenetic origins, we analysed four plant community plots with 24 bryophytes, vascular plants and lichen species in two Alpine bogs in Austria by 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing followed by bioinformatic analyses. The overall bog microbiome was classified into 32 microbial phyla, while Proteobacteria (30.8%), Verrucomicrobia (20.3%) and Planctomycetes (15.1%) belonged to the most abundant groups. Interestingly, the archaeal phylum Euryarcheota represented 7.2% of total microbial abundance. However, a high portion of microorganisms remained unassigned at phylum and class level, respectively. The core microbiome of the bog vegetation contained 177 OTUs (150,526 seq.) and contributed to 49.5% of the total microbial sabundance. Only a minor portion of associated core microorganisms was host specific for examined plant groups (5.9-11.6%). Using our new approach to analyse plant-microbial communities in an integral framework of ecosystem, vegetation and microbiome we demonstrated that bog vegetation harboured a core microbiome that is shared between plants and lichens over the whole ecosystem and formed a transkingdom metacommunity. All micro- and macro-organisms are connected to keystone Sphagnum mosses via set of microbial species, e.g. Burkholderia bryophila which was found associated with a wide spectrum of host plants and is known for a beneficial plant-microbe interaction.

泥炭地（bog）生态系统在地球碳循环与水循环过程中发挥着关键作用。尽管学界已对泥炭地植物群落及其关键物种泥炭藓（Sphagnum）开展了充分研究，但针对与之共生的微生物群落的认知仍较为匮乏。为验证我们的假说——尽管泥炭地植物具有不同的系统发育起源，但其共享一套核心微生物组——我们针对奥地利两处阿尔卑斯泥炭地中的4个植物群落样地展开研究，共涵盖24种苔藓植物、维管植物与地衣物种，实验采用16S rDNA扩增子测序技术，并辅以生物信息学分析手段。整体泥炭地微生物组可划分为32个微生物门，其中变形菌门（Proteobacteria，占比30.8%）、疣微菌门（Verrucomicrobia，占比20.3%）与浮霉菌门（Planctomycetes，占比15.1%）为丰度最高的类群。值得注意的是，广古菌门（Euryarcheota）占总微生物丰度的7.2%，其隶属于古菌域。不过，仍有相当比例的微生物未能在门和纲水平上完成分类注释。泥炭地植被的核心微生物组包含177个操作分类单元（Operational Taxonomic Units，OTUs，共150526条序列），其丰度占总微生物丰度的49.5%。在所检测的植物类群中，仅有极小比例的核心共生微生物表现出宿主特异性，占比为5.9%~11.6%。我们采用全新的研究方法，在生态系统、植被与微生物组的整合框架下分析植物-微生物群落，结果表明，泥炭地植被拥有一套可在整个生态系统的植物与地衣间共享的核心微生物组，进而形成了跨界集合群落（metacommunity）。所有微生物与大型生物均通过一系列核心微生物类群与关键物种泥炭藓（Sphagnum）建立关联，例如苔藓伯克霍尔德菌（Burkholderia bryophila），该类群已被发现可与多种宿主植物共生，且因具有促进植物-微生物互利互作的特性而为人所知。