Divergent Successional Patterns of phoC- and phoD-Phosphate-Solubilizing Microbes During Plateau Mammal (Ochotona curzoniae) Carcass Decomposition

Microbial communities associated with animal cadaver decomposition play a crucial role in biogeochemical cycles in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. However, it remains unclear regarding the diversity, succession, and assembly of phosphate-solubilizing microbes during animal cadaver decay. In this study, plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) as mammal degradation models were placed on alpine meadow soils to study diversity, succession and assembly of phosphate-solubilizing microbes using amplicon sequencing of phoC- and phoD-genes during 94 days of incubation. The total phosphorus concentration in the corpse group increased by 8.53% on average. Alpha diversity of both phoC- and phoD-harboring microbes decreased in the experimental group compared to the control group, and the community structure differed between control and experimental groups. Phosphate-solubilizing microbial community turnover time rate (TDR) of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group, indicating corpse decay accelerates the succession of phoC- and phoD-harboring microbial community. Null model revealed that deterministic process dominated phoC microbial community in corpse group, while the stochastic process dominated phoD microbial community. The microbial network in experimental group was more complicated than that in control group of phoC microbial community, while phoD microbial community showed opposite trend. Partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) showed that phoC-harboring microbial community was mainly influenced by pH, Total carbon (TC) and Total phosphorus (TP), while the phoD microbial community was only regulated by TP. These findings elucidate the ecological mechanism of phosphorus-solubilizing microbial community changes during animal corpse degradation.