Urbanization homogenized soil viral communities across three climate zones

Soil viruses play critical roles in shaping microbial communities and propelling the evolution of microorganisms. However, our understanding of how land use and climate factors modulate soil viral communities across broader geographical scales remains limited. Here, we conducted deep metagenomic sequencing and analysis of soil samples from different land use types including forests, farmland, residential areas, and parks across 13 cities spanning three climatic zones in China. Integrating local and global soil virome data (n = 2.1◊10⁵ vOTUs (viral Operational Taxonomic Units)) with kmer-based methods has increased our understanding of soil viral diversity in metagenomics by about fortyfold. Our combined results demonstrated that the urban green spaces exhibited remarkably lower heterogeneity compared to those from forests and farmland within China. Parks and residential areas reduced viral species diversity by 19.4 % and 33.5 %, respectively, compared to forests. vOTUs from urban green spaces had significantly higher SNB (social niche breadth) compared to those from forests and farmland, indicating the introduction of generalist vOTUs with high genetic variance, and thus resulting in the homogenization of viral communities in urban green spaces across climate zones. Overall, our study provides a comprehensive understanding of the influence of land use on soil viral communities across climate zones at a national scale.