Rice–crayfish integrated farming model enhances the resilience of ecosystems by improving physicochemical properties and stability of microbial communities
摘要
Aquaculture models influence the physicochemical properties of edaphic and aquatic environments as well as microbial community structures and functions. Accurately understanding the interactions behind this phenomenon remains challenging. This study compared three models that have been continuously cultivated for 5 years: the rice–crayfish integrated farming (RC), intensive culture pond (IPC), and rice monoculture (RM), through a comprehensive analysis of environmental parameters, microbial community composition (bacteria and fungi), and ecological network structures. RC effectively reduced aquatic ammonia nitrogen and total phosphorus levels while simultaneously enhancing soil fertility parameters and reducing soil heavy metal accumulation. The approach markedly increased the richness of aquatic microbial communities, and altered the microbial community compositions, including both bacteria and fungi. In RC, both water and soil bacterial networks exhibited greater complexity, with a higher average degree and shorter average path distance. Correlation analysis identified total phosphorus as a key factor influencing aquatic community structures and core species. Besides total phosphorus, β-glucosidase and nitrate nitrogen were key factors for soil bacterial dynamics, with ammonium nitrogen being critical for soil fungi. The prediction of bacterial functions revealed that upregulated functional genes were mainly involved in the response processes of environmental signals, ABC transport proteins, and energy metabolism. RC improved environmental sustainability and stability of microbial communities, associated with community compositions variation, more complicated ecological networks and upregulated functional genes. Overall, the rice–crayfish farming improved the resilience of aquaculture ecosystems, providing a new approach to alleviating the environmental pressure caused by aquaculture activities.