Data_Sheet_1_Inferring the Contribution of Microbial Taxa and Organic Matter Molecular Formulas to Ecological Assembly.ZIP

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the assembly of communities has long been the goal of many ecological studies. While several studies have evaluated community wide ecological assembly, fewer have focused on investigating the impacts of individual members within a community or assemblage on ecological assembly. Here, we adapted a previous null model β-nearest taxon index (βNTI) to measure the contribution of individual features within an ecological community to overall assembly. This new metric, called feature-level βNTI (βNTIfeat), enables researchers to determine whether ecological features (e.g., individual microbial taxa) contribute to divergence, convergence, or have insignificant impacts across spatiotemporally resolved metacommunities or meta-assemblages. Using βNTIfeat, we revealed that unclassified microbial lineages often contributed to community divergence while diverse groups (e.g., Crenarchaeota, Alphaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria) contributed to convergence. We also demonstrate that βNTIfeat can be extended to other ecological assemblages such as organic molecules comprising organic matter (OM) pools. OM had more inconsistent trends compared to the microbial community though CHO-containing molecular formulas often contributed to convergence, while nitrogen and phosphorus-containing formulas contributed to both convergence and divergence. A network analysis was used to relate βNTIfeat values from the putatively active microbial community and the OM assemblage and examine potentially common contributions to ecological assembly across different communities/assemblages. This analysis revealed that P-containing formulas often contributed to convergence/divergence separately from other ecological features and N-containing formulas often contributed to assembly in coordination with microorganisms. Additionally, members of Family Geobacteraceae were often observed to contribute to convergence/divergence in conjunction with both N- and P-containing formulas, suggesting a coordinated ecological role for family members and the nitrogen/phosphorus cycle. Overall, we show that βNTIfeat offers opportunities to investigate the community or assemblage members, which shape the phylogenetic or functional landscape, and demonstrate the potential to evaluate potential points of coordination across various community types.

长期以来，解读群落组装之内在机制一直是众多生态学研究的目标。尽管已有研究对群落整体的生态组装进行了评估，但关注于探究群落或集合体中个体成员对生态组装影响的研究相对较少。在本研究中，我们借鉴了先前提出的零模型β-最近分类单元指数（β-NTI）方法，以衡量生态群落中个体特征的总体组装贡献。这一新型指标，即特征级β-NTI（β-NTIfeat），使得研究人员能够判断生态特征（例如，单个微生物分类单元）对群落差异、趋同或对时空解析的元群落或元集合体具有显著或不显著的影响。通过β-NTIfeat的应用，我们揭示了未分类微生物谱系通常导致群落差异，而多样化的群体（例如，广古菌门、α-变形菌和γ-变形菌）则促进了趋同。此外，我们还证明了β-NTIfeat可以扩展应用于其他生态集合体，如组成有机物质（OM）池的有机分子。与微生物群落相比，OM的趋势更为不一致，尽管含有CHO的分子式通常促进趋同，而含氮和磷的分子式则促进趋同与差异。通过网络分析，我们将推测活跃微生物群落与OM集合体的β-NTIfeat值联系起来，以考察不同群落/集合体之间在生态组装上的潜在共同贡献。该分析揭示，含磷的分子式通常与其他生态特征分离，独立地促进趋同/差异，而含氮的分子式则通常与微生物共同促进组装。此外，常观察到Geobacteraceae科成员与含氮和磷的分子式共同促进趋同/差异，这表明科成员在氮/磷循环中发挥着协调的生态作用。总体而言，本研究表明β-NTIfeat为探究塑造系统发育或功能景观的群落或集合体成员提供了机遇，并展示了评估不同群落类型之间潜在协调点的潜力。