Experimental and sampling design
Biological soil crusts, and related environmental data and
samples, were collected at four sites in the Chihuahuan Desert
with varying vegetation and soils. At each of the four sites in
the study, 2 intersecting 30m transects were laid out in an X
shape crossing at the 15m mark. From these transects, replicate
samples of 5 types of biological soil crusts were collected, along
with representative soil samples and data on vegetation cover.
Collections occurred between May and July of 2020 and samples were
subsequently processed and analyzed using the following methods.
Preparation and metagenomic analysis (sequencing) of
biological soil crust samples
At each of the four sites, five biocrust soil samples were
collected for each of the five crust types (100 samples total).
All soil crust samples were collected along the 2 intersecting 30
meter transects. Samples were stored in a -80C freezer until
processing. Samples were homogenized by physically crushing the
biocrust aggregate and shaking the collection bag until well
mixed. A sample weight of ~0.25g biocrust soil was collected from
each homogenized sample.Whole community genomic DNA was extracted
from each crust type per site using DNeasy PowerLyzer Soil Kit by
QIAGEN (Qiagen Laboratories, Carlsbad, CA, USA), with modification
to the bead beating homogenizer step. Samples were subject to two
45sec interval and 5sec rest cycle in the Precellys 24 tissue
homogenizer (Bertin Instruments, Paris, France) at 2500rpm. Some
duplicate samples were added to the final well plate, for a total
of 106 samples. Extracted DNA was sent to University of Minnesota
Genomics Center for library preparation, amplification, and
Illumina MiSeq. Illumina MiSeq sequencing occurred in 2x300 PE
base format targeting 16S rRNA V4 gene region with the 515F and
806R primers following the protocol of the Earth Microbiome
Project. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed with KAPA
HiFidelity Hot Start Polymerase in a two step process. qPCR was
carried out for quality checking with an initial denaturation 95ºC
5min, followed by 35 cycles of: denaturation 98ºC 20 sec,
annealing 55ºC 15sec, and elongation 72ºC 1 min, followed by a
final 70ºC 5min elongation and holding at 4ºC thereafter. Samples
were then normalized to 167,000 molecules/ul. PCR1 was performed
using the same steps as in qPCR but with 25 cycles. Samples were
then diluted to 1:100 and 5ul were used in PCR2 where again the
same steps were performed as in qPCR but using different forward
and reverse indexing primer combinations and 10 cycles. Samples
were pooled and denatured in 8 pM NaOH diluted in Illumina’s HT1
buffer, spiked with 15% PhiX. Heat denaturation was also carried
out immediately before sample loading for 2min at 96ºC. Sequencing
was performed using a MiSeq 600 cycle v3 kit. Post run trimming
was carried out with Nextera adapter sequences. After
demultiplexing, a total of 4,924,626 sequence reads were received
in a range from 28-79381 per sample.
The raw sequence data can be found at the NCBI repository under
BioProject #PRJNA748083, and metadata connecting NCBI sequence
accessions to the sites and samples in this dataset can be found
in the included data inventory table
(JRN549001_sample_and_ncbi_inventory.csv).
Line Point Intercept data
Site characterization via line point intercept surveys (Herrick el
al. 2016) was carried out along two transects at each of the 4
sites (May-July 2020). Surveys assessed plant and biocrust percent
cover. Presence/absence of plant and/or biocrust type was recorded
every 0.2m along 2 intersecting 30m transects (in X shape crossing
at 15m). This information will be used to upscale carbon and
nitrogen fixation rates to the landscape according to biocrust
percent cover. Transects had a maximum of two codes between
TopCanopy and SoilSurface, and cover codes used in the LPI data
file are non-standard, so an explanatory table, with links to USDA
Plants codes (https://plants.usda.gov) where applicable, are
included in an attached file (JRN549001_LPI_codes.csv).
Soil chemistry data
To characterize soil chemical composition, composite soil samples
(250g) were collected for each crust type at each site from 5
places along the 2 intersecting 30m transects. Samples were
collected using sterile technique and stored at 4˚C until shipping
to Ward Laboratories for analysis. Soil chemical analysis included
CEC and Base Saturation (Haby et al. 1990 & Warncke et
al. 1998), soil pH (Mc Lean 1982 & Watson & Brown 1998),
soluble salt analysis (Rhoades 1982), loss on ignition (Combs
& Nathan 1998), Mehlich 3 extract (Mehlich 1984 & Lachat
instruments 2003, Rao & Sharma 1997), and H2O extract (Haney
et al.1999, Haney et al. 2018).
Cyanobacterial abundance
Supercomputing was used to process sequencing data with
standardized bioinformatics pipelines in Qiime2 (v2021.2) and
AMPtk (v1.42). Briefly, the AMPtk program merged forward and
reverse reads, binned samples according to barcode sequences,
removed barcodes and primers, trimmed reads to 300 base pairs,
clustered reads into ASVs with 97% similarity, and removed
singleton ASVs.Bacterial taxonomy was assigned using Qiime2
pipeline and Silva (v138.1) (Bacteria and Archaea) database.
Sequence data analyses were carried out in the R package phyloseq.
Singletons and 9 samples with low read count were removed from the
data set leaving a total of 4,922,472 sequences in a range of
10,753-79,381 sequences merged. ASVs were rarified to the minimum
read count of 10,753. Chloroplast and mitochondrial data was
removed and bacterial data was subsequently assessed for relative
abundance of bacteria by Phylum. Cyanobacterial data was subset
and manually reclassified using Cydrasil version 3.
PLFA Biomass
Broad taxonomic and functional group assignments of soil crust
communities were made using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA)
analysis. Composite samples (250g) were collected for each crust
type at each site from 5 places along the 2 intersecting 30m
transects (in X shape crossing at 15m). Samples were collected
using sterile technique and stored at 4˚C until shipping to Ward
Laboratories for analysis. PLFA analysis was carried out using the
procedure detailed in Stott (2019), based on the work of Buyer
& Sasser (2012).
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