Biodiversity and core microbiota of key-stone ecological clusters regulate compost maturity during cow-dung-driven...

The primary objectives of this study were to explore the community-level succession of bacteria, fungi, and protists during cow-dung-driven composting and to elucidate the contribution of the biodiversity and core microbiota of key-stone microbial clusters on compost maturity. Herein, we used high-throughput sequencing, polytrophic ecological networks, and statistical models to visualize our hypothesis. The results showed significant differences in the richness, phylogenetic diversity, and community composition of bacteria, fungi, and eukaryotes at different composting stages. The ASV191 (Sphingobacterium), ASV2243 (Galibacter), ASV206 (Galibacter), and ASV62 (Firmicutes) were the core microbiota of key-stone bacterial clusters relating to compost maturity; And the ASV356 (Chytridiomycota), ASV470 (Basidiomycota), and ASV299 (Ciliophora) were the core microbiota of key-stone eukaryotic clusters relating to compost maturity based on the data of this study. Compared with the fungal taxa, the biodiversity and core microbiota of key-stone bacterial and eukaryotic clusters contributed more to compost maturity and could largely predict the change in the compost maturity. Structural equation modeling revealed that the biodiversity of total microbial communities and the biodiversity and core microbiota of the key-stone microbial clusters in the compost directly and indirectly regulated compost maturity by influencing nutrient availability (e.g., NH₄⁺-N and NO₃^--N), hemicellulose, humic acid content, and fulvic acid content, respectively. These results contribute to our understanding of the biodiversity and core microbiota of key-stone microbial clusters in compost to improve the performance and efficiency of cow-dung-driven composting.