Ecological niche specialization steers the microbial carbon pump via metabolic synergies in rice-crayfish co-culture systems

Against the backdrop of global climate change and carbon neutrality goals, agricultural soil carbon sequestration has become a critical pathway to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Rice-crayfish co-culture (RC), a core model of integrated rice-aquaculture, significantly enhances soil organic carbon (SOC) storage compared to traditional rice monoculture (RM), yet the underlying microbial mechanisms remain elusive. We conducted paired soil sampling across large-scale representative regions from long-term RC and RM plots, focusing on specialists and generalists with distinct niche breadths and carbon metabolic traits to decipher the key drivers of targeted carbon sequestration.By assembling genome through metagenome, we have obtained microorganisms that may play an important role.