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Summary: Termites are pivotal ecosystem engineers in tropical and subtropical habitats, where they construct massive nests ('mounds') that substantially modify soil properties and promote nutrient cycling. Yet, little is known about the roles of termite nesting activity in regulating the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), one of the major Global Health challenges. Here, we conducted a large‐scale (> 1500 km) investigation in northern Australia and found distinct resistome profiles in termite mounds and bulk soils. By profiling a wide spectrum of ARGs, we found that the abundance and diversity of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) were significantly lower in termite mounds than in bulk soils (P < 0.001). The proportion of efflux pump ARGs was significantly lower in termite mound resistome than in bulk soil resistome (P < 0.001). The differences in resistome profiles between termite mounds and bulk soils may result from the changes in microbial interactions owing to the substantial increase in pH and nutrient availability induced by termite nesting activities. These findings advance our understanding of the profile of ARGs in termite mounds, which is a crucial step to evaluate the roles of soil faunal activity in regulating soil resistome under global environmental change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Termites are ubiquitous insects in tropical and subtropical habitats, and some of them construct massive nests ('mounds'), which substantially promote substrate heterogeneity by altering soil properties. Yet, the role of termite nesting process in regulating the distribution and diversity of soil microbial communities remains poorly understood, which introduces uncertainty in predictions of ecosystem functions of termite mounds in a changing environment. Here, by using amplicon sequencing, we conducted a survey of 134 termite mounds across >1500 km in northern Australia and found that termite mounds significantly differed from bulk soils in the microbial diversity and community compositions. Compared with bulk soils, termite nesting process decreased the microbial diversity and the relative abundance of rare taxa. Rare taxa had a narrower habitat niche breadth than dominant taxa and might be easier to be filtered by the potential intensive microbial competition during the nesting processes. We further demonstrated that the shift in pH induced by termite nesting process was a major driver shaping the microbial community profiles in termite mounds. Together, our work provides novel evidence that termite nesting is an important process in regulating soil microbial diversity, which advances our understanding of the functioning of termite mounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Termite mounds are an important habitat for an enormous diversity of microorganisms. However, the microbial community assembly processes in termite mounds remain unresolved, which impeded our ability to predict the biological functions of these mound-associated microbiota under the global changes. Here we conducted a large-scale investigation in northern Australia to explore biogeographical patterns of microbial community in termite mounds and identify the role of deterministic and stochastic processes in microbial community assembly. Microbial communities in termite mounds exhibited a significant distance-decay pattern, and fungi had a stronger distance-decay relationship than bacteria. The neutral community model and normalized stochasticity ratio index (NST) revealed that the deterministic selection, rather than stochastic forces, predominated the microbial community assembly in termite mounds. Deterministic processes exhibited a significantly weaker impact on bacteria (NST = 45.23%) than on fungi (NST = 33.72%), likely due to the wider habitat niche breadth and higher potential migration rate of bacteria. Random forest model further demonstrated that mean annual temperature was the most important predictor of both bacterial and fungal profiles in termite mounds. These findings improved our understanding of spatial patterns and processes of microbiome in termite mounds, which is critical to decipher the role of termite mounds associated microbes in regulating ecosystem multifunctionality. • Termite mounds associated microbial communities exhibited a significant distance-decay pattern. • Deterministic selection predominated the microbial community assembly in termite mounds. • Mean annual temperature is the most important predictor of microbial profiles in termite mounds. • Deterministic processes exhibited a weaker impact on bacteria than fungi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]