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Disturbance and recovery: a synthesis of microbial community reassembly following disturbance across realms
  • +2
  • Stephanie Jurburg,
  • Shane Blowes,
  • Ashley Shade,
  • Nico Eisenhauer,
  • Jonathan Chase
Stephanie Jurburg
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Shane Blowes
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
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Ashley Shade
Michigan State University
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Nico Eisenhauer
University of Leipzig
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Jonathan Chase
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
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Abstract

Disturbances alter the diversity and composition of microbial communities, but whether microbiomes from different environments exhibit similar degrees of resistance or rates of recovery has not been evaluated. Here, we synthesized 86 time series of disturbed mammalian, aquatic, and soil microbiomes to examine how the recovery of microbial richness and community composition differed after disturbance. We found no general patterns in compositional variance (i.e., dispersion) in any microbiomes over time. Only mammalian microbiomes consistently exhibited decreases in richness following disturbance. Importantly, they tended to recover this richness, but not their composition, over time. In contrast, aquatic microbiomes tended to diverge from their pre-disturbance composition following disturbance. By synthesizing microbiome responses across environments, our study aids in the reconciliation of disparate microbial community assembly frameworks, and highlights the role of the environment in microbial community reassembly following disturbance.