Raw sequencing data for studying the colonization of soil communities after glacier retreat

Glaciers show a pattern of retreat at the global scale. Deglaciated areas are exposed and colonized by multiple organisms, but lack of global studies hampers a complete understanding of the future of these ecosystems. Until now, the complete reconstruction of soil communities was hampered by the complex identification of organisms, thus analyses at broad geographical and taxonomic scale have been so far impossible. The dataset used for this study represents the assemblages of Bacteria, Mycota, Eukaryota, Collembola (springtails), Oligochaeta (Earth worms), Insecta, Arthropoda and Vascular Plants obtained using environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding. eDNA was extracted from soil samples collected from multiple glacier forelands representative of some of the main mountain chains of Europe, Asia, the Americas and Oceania. We investigated chronosequences of glacier retreat (i.e., the chronological sequence of specific geomorphological features along deglaciated areas for which the date of glacier retreat is known) ranging from recent years to the Little Ice Age (~1850). We used this newly assembled global DNA metabarcoding dataset to obtain a complete reconstruction of community changes in novel ecosystems after glacier retreat. Information on assemblages can be then combined with analyses of soil, landscape and climate to identify the drivers of community changes.全球范围内的冰川均呈现消退态势。冰退区域裸露后会被多种生物定殖，但目前缺乏全球尺度的相关研究，阻碍了我们对这类生态系统未来的全面认知。此前，由于生物物种的鉴定流程复杂，土壤群落的完整重建工作难以推进，因此在大地理范围与分类学尺度下的相关分析始终无法实现。 本研究使用的数据集，是通过环境DNA（environmental DNA，简称eDNA）元条形码（metabarcoding）技术获取的细菌、真菌界（Mycota）、真核生物（Eukaryota）、弹尾纲（Collembola，俗称跳虫）、寡毛纲（Oligochaeta，即蚯蚓类群）、昆虫纲（Insecta）、节肢动物门（Arthropoda）以及维管植物（Vascular Plants）的群落组成数据。上述eDNA提取自欧洲、亚洲、美洲及大洋洲主要山脉链代表性冰川前缘采集的土壤样本。 我们针对冰川退缩的时间序列展开了研究——即沿冰退区域的特定地貌特征的年代序列，其冰川退缩时间可考——时间跨度从近年直至小冰期（约1850年）。 我们借助这套全新整合的全球DNA元条形码数据集，完成了冰川退缩后新生生态系统群落变化的完整重建。后续可将群落组成信息与土壤、景观及气候分析相结合，以明确群落变化的驱动因子。