论文题目：Trait-Based Life History Strategies Shape Bacterial Niche Breadth
论文作者：Peng, Ziheng; Zhang, Yiran; Li, Xiaomeng; Gao, Hang; Liu, Yu; An, Yining; Qian, Xun; Wei, Gehong; Jiao, Shuo
论文摘要：
The ecological niche represents a fundamental property of organisms, reflecting their diversity of utilized resources or environmental tolerances across space and time. Despite a wealth of studies revealing that not all bacteria being everywhere, the key traits that determine niche breadth have remained unclear. Here, bacterial niche breadth based on a large-scale soil survey across a wide range of environmental gradients at a national-scale is characterized, and evaluated their life-history traits utilizing over 2000 bacterial genomic datasets from the Genome Taxonomy Database (GTDB). A positive relationship between gene functional diversity and niche breadth is found, and identified a key set of bacterial traits associated with niche breadth, which are assigned to five life-history categories, encompassing growth, competition, stress tolerance, resource acquisition, and dispersal ability. The traits of these categories are captured by distinct clusters in the full dimensionality of trait space, suggesting that a broad-niche taxon may indeed possess multiple facets of life history strategies essential for survival in diverse environments. Bacterial taxa with wider niche breadth maximized a diversity of traits associated with different life history strategies, whereas specialists tended to harbor a smaller number of traits associated with fewer life history strategies. Together, this study offers new insights into developing a trait-based understanding of bacterial niche breadth from the perspective of life history theory.
微生物生态学的一个核心议题是理解微生物如何在空间和环境梯度中分布。然而，影响微生物生态位宽度的内在机制，尤其是生活史策略的作用，仍知之甚少。生态位宽度是衡量物种在多样化环境中生存与繁衍能力的关键生态参数，其本质上是物种在n维生态位空间中对环境因子（如光照、养分、温度等）的耐受范围与资源利用效率的综合表现。揭示影响生态位宽度的微生物生活史策略，有助于从功能性和进化视角理解微生物的环境适应性与分布格局。本研究基于覆盖全国的大尺度土壤调查，量化了细菌类群在广泛环境梯度下的生态位宽度，并利用2000余个高质量细菌基因组数据，评估了它们的基因功能特征与生活史策略。我们构建了一个新的微生物生活史策略框架，在经典的竞争者-压力耐受者-机会主义者（C-S-R）模型基础上扩展为五大类：生长潜力、资源竞争、环境胁迫耐受性、资源获取机制与扩散能力。研究结果表明，基因功能的多样性越高，其生态位宽度也越大，表明拥有更丰富功能基因的类群更可能适应多样化的环境。此外，我们进一步识别出一组与生态位宽度显著相关的关键性状，这些性状与生长潜力、资源竞争能力、环境胁迫耐受性、资源获取机制和扩散能力密切相关。生活史性状在生态位空间的多个维度上呈现聚集性，提示广泛生态位的细菌类群可能整合了多种生活史策略以适应复杂多变的环境条件。相比之下，生态位较窄的“专家型”细菌类群则倾向于在特定策略维度中具有优势。本研究系统性地将生活史理论引入微生物生态位宽度的研究中，揭示了基因组层面的功能性状如何协同塑造细菌的生态广度。这些发现不仅深化了我们对微生物生态适应策略的理解，也为预测微生物群落在全球变化背景下的动态变化提供了理论支撑。
论文链接：https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.202405947