Co-occurrence interaction networks of extremophile species living in a copper mining tailing.

This work generates a co-occurrence network, representing the bacterial soil community from the Cauquenes copper tailing, which is the largest copper waste deposit worldwide. A representative sampling of six zones from the Cauquenes tailing was carried out to determine pH, heavy metal concentration, total DNA extraction, and subsequent assignment of OTUs. The resulting models revealed a rearrangement between the interactions of members living in the old and new tailings, and highlighted conserved bacterial drivers as key nodes, with positive interactions in the network of the old tailings, compared to the new tailings. These results provide insights into the structure of the soil bacterial communities growing under extreme environmental conditions in mines.