AMF community composition and assembly mechanism in the ecological damage area of antimony mine

In this study, we propose the following hypothesis: (1) AMF diversity, dominant species, co-occurrence patterns and keystone taxa differ among the Sb mining areas with different types of ecological damage; (2) the responses of AMF diversity, co-occurrence patterns, and community assembly mechanism to soil Sb pollution were different in Sb mining areas with different types of ecological damage, and Sb was not always the dominant factor of AMF community variation in Sb mining areas; (3) stochastic processes and deterministic processes may be affected by different environmental factors or research scales, and present different balance models in different regions or between regions. In order to verify the above hypothesis, we selected three research regions in western and southwestern China, namely Nandan Sb mining area, Qinglong Sb mining area, and Xihe Sb mining area, set a total of 12 sampling sites with different environmental factors, and collected 108 soil samples. The Illumina Miseq platform was used to perform high-throughput sequencing of soil samples, combined with the correlation analysis of environmental factors, to determine the AMF community composition and diversity, co-occurrence pattern, and community assembly mechanism, in order to prove the AMF community composition, distribution, and assembly mechanism and its dominant factors in the ecological damage area of Sb mine. This work may provide new insights for the maintenance and evolution of AMF community in mining area.