Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi distribution responds to ecological damage characteristics in antimony mining ecosystems

The fragmented ecological environment in the mining ecosystem has a significant impact on the microbial community and affects ecosystem stability. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) facilitate nutrient exchange and element cycling between soil and plants, which play a crucial role in the functionality and stability of soil ecosystems. However, the mechanism of ecological environment factors influencing AMF community assembly in mining areas is still unclear. Here, we investigated AMF community composition, diversity, network structure, and community assembly in three typical antimony mining areas in southwest China from the macro and micro perspectives. We found that the environmental characteristic factors in mining ecosystems, especially the multiple heavy metal pollution, significantly affected the composition, stability, and complexity of the AMF community. Inter- and intra-regional AMF community assembly was dominated by deterministic (variable selection) and stochastic processes, respectively. The importance of the deterministic process increased with environmental distance, suggesting that environmental filtration was a crucial ecological process driving AMF community assembly. Our study shows that the characteristics of heavy metal pollution in mining ecosystems induce the evolution of soil AMF structure and function and emphasizes the unique adaptive capacity of AMF communities to mining ecosystems. This provides new insights into the composition and evolution of the AMF community in the mining ecosystem, which is crucial for maintaining the stability of the mining ecosystem, and also provides theoretical support for potential ecological restoration strategies in mining areas.