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 (<i>Ochotona curzoniae</i>) as mammal degradation models were placed on alpine meadow soils to study diversity, succession and assembly of phosphate-solubilizing microbes using amplicon sequencing of <i>phoC</i>- and <i>phoD</i>-genes during 94 days of incubation. The total phosphorus concentration in the corpse group increased by 8.53% on average. Alpha diversity of both <i>phoC</i>- and <i>phoD</i>-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 <i>phoC</i>- and <i>phoD</i>-harboring microbial community. Null model revealed that deterministic process dominated <i>phoC</i> microbial community in corpse group, while the stochastic process dominated <i>phoD</i> microbial community. The microbial network in experimental group was more complicated than that in control group of <i>phoC</i> microbial community, while <i>phoD</i> microbial community showed opposite trend. Partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) showed that <i>phoC</i>-harboring microbial community was mainly influenced by pH, Total carbon (TC) and Total phosphorus (TP), while the <i>phoD</i> microbial community was only regulated by TP. These findings elucidate the ecological mechanism of phosphorus-solubilizing microbial community changes during animal corpse degradation.