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At least 559 records · Page 31
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

From remotely-sensed solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence to ecosystem structure, function, and service: Part II—Harnessing data

Although our observing capabilities of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) have been growing rapidly, the quality and consistency of SIF datasets are still in an active stage of research and development. As a result, there are considerable inconsistencies among diverse SIF datasets at all scales and the widespread applications of them have led to contradictory findings. The present review is the second of the two companion reviews, and data oriented. It aims to (1) synthesize the variety, scale, and uncertainty of existing SIF datasets, (2) synthesize the diverse applications in the sector of ecology, agriculture, hydrology, climate, and socioeconomics, and (3) clarify how such data inconsistency superimposed with the theoretical complexities laid out in may impact process interpretation of various applications and contribute to inconsistent findings. We emphasize that accurate interpretation of the functional relationships between SIF and other ecological indicators is contingent upon complete understanding of SIF data quality and uncertainty. Additionally, biases and uncertainties in SIF observations can significantly confound interpretation of their relationships and how such relationships respond to environmental variations. Built upon our syntheses, we summarize existing gaps and uncertainties in current SIF observations. Further, we offer our perspectives on innovations needed to help improve informing ecosystem structure, function, and service under climate change, including enhancing in-situ SIF observing capability especially in “data desert” regions, improving cross-instrument data standardization and network coordination, and advancing applications by fully harnessing theory and data.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Ecosystem–scale biogeochemical fluxes from three bioenergy crop candidates: How energy sorghum compares to maize and miscanthus

Perennial crops have been the focus of bioenergy research and development for their sustainability benefits associated with high soil carbon (C) and reduced nitrogen (N) requirements. However, perennial crops mature over several years and their sustainability benefits can be negated through land reversion. A photoperiod–sensitive energy sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) may provide an annual crop alternative more ecologically sustainable than maize (Zea mays) that can more easily integrate into crop rotations than perennials, such as miscanthus (Miscanthus × giganteus). This study presents an ecosystem–scale comparison of C, N, water and energy fluxes from energy sorghum, maize and miscanthus during a typical growing season in the Midwest United States. Gross primary productivity (GPP) was highest for maize during the peak growing season at 21.83 g C m –2 day –1 , followed by energy sorghum (17.04 g C m –2 day –1 ) and miscanthus (15.57 g C m –2 day –1 ). Maize also had the highest peak growing season evapotranspiration at 5.39 mm day –1 , with energy sorghum and miscanthus at 3.81 and 3.61 mm day –1 , respectively. Energy sorghum was the most efficient water user (WUE), while maize and miscanthus were comparatively similar (3.04, 1.75 and 1.89 g C mm –1 H 2 O, respectively). Maize albedo was lower than energy sorghum and miscanthus (0.19, 0.26 and 0.24, respectively), but energy sorghum had a Bowen ratio closer to maize than miscanthus (0.12, 0.13 and 0.21, respectively). Nitrous oxide (N 2 O) flux was higher from maize and energy sorghum (8.86 and 12.04 kg N ha –1 , respectively) compared with miscanthus (0.51 kg N ha –1 ), indicative of their different agronomic management. Furthermore, these results are an important first look at how energy sorghum compares to maize and miscanthus grown in the Midwest United States. This quantitative assessment is a critical component for calibrating biogeochemical and ecological models used to forecast bioenergy crop growth, productivity and sustainability.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Economic and environmental bottlenecks in the industrial‐scale production of lipid‐derived biofuels from oleaginous yeasts: A review of the current trends and future prospects

Abstract Concerns about climate change and the reliance on fossil fuel reserves have motivated researchers to identify new renewable sources of energy. Biomass holds the potential to replace fossil‐derived products with biofuels and bio‐based chemicals. Plant‐derived lipids are promising sources of biofuels; however, the production of plant oil often leads to the release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide due to deforestation and land‐use change. The production of biofuels via plant oils (such as soybean) also competes with food production and in turn, impacts biodiversity. To mitigate these issues, the production of lipids from oleaginous yeasts could be an excellent alternative by incorporating these microbes into biorefineries utilizing agricultural or forest residues. Eventually, these microbial lipids could be potential sources for producing lipid‐derived biofuels. However, the current conventional methods for the production and recovery of lipids from oleaginous microbes suffer from economic and ecological challenges that affect its industrial‐scale expansion. This review highlights the major economic and environmental bottlenecks for the production of lipid‐derived biofuels from oleaginous yeasts. It also provides perspectives on the strategies that could be adapted on economic and ecological fronts to assist the expansion of the production of microbial lipid‐derived biofuels at an industrial scale.

Agriculture↗
DOE OSTI2020

Temperature drives local contributions to beta diversity in mountain streams: stochastic and deterministic processes

Community variation (i.e. beta diversity) in geographical coenoclines is of substantial interest in ecology, yet the elevational patterns in beta diversity are still understudied, and no general conclusions have been reached. Here, we explored local contributions to beta diversity (LCBD) of stream bacteria, diatoms and macroinvertebrates on mountainsides. Across all taxa, we revealed a general U-shaped LCBD-elevation relationships (LCBDer), suggesting higher uniqueness of community composition at the two ends of the elevational gradients. This pattern was confirmed by coenocline simulations based on observed communities, and supported by the dominance of species replacement in total beta diversity. Across mountains and taxonomic groups, temperature was the main environmental factor underlying elevational patterns in LCBD and its metric relatives, which were also mediated by local environmental variables. The observed magnitudes of U-shaped LCBDer across mountains and taxonomic groups were specifically related to the heterogeneity of stream morphology, and the mean annual temperature on each mountain. U-shaped LCBDer were strengthened by the occurrence of generalist species with large elevational ranges, while rare species had a lesser effect on the patterns. Raup-Crick beta diversity indicated that both stochastic and deterministic processes drove the community assembly, and the latter one was positively related to the magnitudes of LCBDer. Our synthesis across mountains and taxonomic groups clearly shows that there are consistent elevational patterns in LCBD among taxonomic groups, and that these patterns are explained by similar ecological mechanisms, producing a more complete picture in understanding and bridging the spatial variation in biodiversity under changing climate.

Wang, Jianjun↗
DOE OSTI2021

Intrinsic and extrinsic factors interact during development to influence telomere length in a long‐lived reptile

Abstract The mechanisms connecting environmental conditions to plasticity in biological aging trajectories are fundamental to understanding individual variation in functional traits and life history. Recent findings suggest that telomere biology is especially dynamic during early life stages and has long‐term consequences for subsequent reproduction and survival. However, our current understanding is mostly derived from studies investigating ecological and anthropogenic factors separately, leaving the effects of complex environmental interactions unresolved. American alligators ( Alligator mississippiensis ) are long‐lived apex predators that rely on incubation temperature during a discrete period during development and endocrine cues to determine sex, making them especially vulnerable to current climatic variability and exposure to anthropogenic contaminants interfering with hormone function. Here, we combine field studies with a factorial design to understand how the developmental environment, along with intrinsic biological variation contribute to persistent telomere variation. We found that exposure to a common endocrine disrupting contaminant, DDE, affects telomere length, but that the directionality is highly dependent upon incubation temperature. Variation in hatchling growth, underlies a strong clutch effect. We also assess concentrations of a panel of glucocorticoid hormones and find that contaminant exposure elicits an increase in circulating glucocorticoids. Consistent with emerging evidence linking stress and aging trajectories, GC levels also appear to trend with shorter telomere length. Thus, we add support for a mechanistic link between contaminants and glucocorticoid signalling, which interacts with ecological aspects of the developmental environment to alter telomere dynamics.

Bae, Junsoo↗
DOE OSTI2022

Delimiting the cryptic diversity and host preferences of Sycophila parasitoid wasps associated with oak galls using phylogenomic data

Abstract Cryptic species diversity is a major challenge regarding the species‐rich community of parasitoids attacking oak gall wasps due to a high degree of sexual dimorphism, morphological plasticity, small size and poorly known biology. As such, we know very little about the number of species present, nor the evolutionary forces responsible for generating this diversity. One hypothesis is that trait diversity in the gall wasps, including the morphology of the galls they induce, has evolved in response to selection imposed by the parasitoid community, with reciprocal selection driving diversification of the parasitoids. Using a rare, continental‐scale data set of Sycophila parasitoid wasps reared from 44 species of cynipid galls from 18 species of oak across the USA, we combined mitochondrial DNA barcodes, ultraconserved elements (UCEs), morphological and natural history data to delimit putative species. Using these results, we generate the first large‐scale assessment of ecological specialization and host association in this species‐rich group, with implications for evolutionary ecology and biocontrol. We find most Sycophila target specific subsets of available cynipid host galls with similar morphologies, and generally attack larger galls. Our results suggest that parasitoid wasps such as Sycophila have adaptations allowing them to exploit particular host trait combinations, while hosts with contrasting traits are resistant to attack. These findings support the tritrophic niche concept for the structuring of plant–herbivore–parasitoid communities.

Zhang, Yuanmeng M.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Microdiverse bacterial clades prevail across Antarctic wetlands

Antarctica's extreme environmental conditions impose selection pressures on microbial communities. Indeed, a previous study revealed that bacterial assemblages at the Cierva Point Wetland Complex (CPWC) are shaped by strong homogeneous selection. Yet which bacterial phylogenetic clades are shaped by selection processes and their ecological strategies to thrive in such extreme conditions remain unknown. Here, we applied the phyloscore and feature-level βNTI indexes coupled with phylofactorization to successfully detect bacterial monophyletic clades subjected to homogeneous (HoS) and heterogenous (HeS) selection. Remarkably, only the HoS clades showed high relative abundance across all samples and signs of putative microdiversity. The majority of the amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) within each HoS clade clustered into a unique 97% sequence similarity operational taxonomic unit (OTU) and inhabited a specific environment (lotic, lentic or terrestrial). Our findings suggest the existence of microdiversification leading to sub-taxa niche differentiation, with putative distinct ecotypes (consisting of groups of ASVs) adapted to a specific environment. We hypothesize that HoS clades thriving in the CPWC have phylogenetically conserved traits that accelerate their rate of evolution, enabling them to adapt to strong spatio-temporally variable selection pressures. Variable selection appears to operate within clades to cause very rapid microdiversification without losing key traits that lead to high abundance. Variable and homogeneous selection, therefore, operate simultaneously but on different aspects of organismal ecology. The result is an overall signal of homogeneous selection due to rapid within-clade microdiversification caused by variable selection. It is unknown whether other systems experience this dynamic, and we encourage future work evaluating the transferability of our results.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Genetic time traveling: sequencing old herbarium specimens, including the oldest herbarium specimen sequenced from kingdom Fungi, reveals the population structure of an agriculturally significant rust

Summary Sequencing herbarium specimens can be instrumental in answering ecological, evolutionary, and taxonomic inquiries. We developed a protocol for sequencing herbarium specimens of rust fungi (Pucciniales) and proceeded to sequence specimens ranging from 4 to 211 yr old from five different genera. We then obtained sequences from an economically important biological control agent, Puccinia suaveolens , to highlight the potential of sequencing herbarium specimens in an ecological sense and to evaluate the following hypotheses: (1) The population structure of a plant pathogen changes over time, and (2) introduced pathogens are more diverse in their native range. Our efforts resulted in sequences from 87 herbarium specimens that revealed a high level of diversity with a population structure that exhibited spatial–temporal patterns. The specimens sequenced from Europe showed more diversity than the ones from North America, uncovering an invasion pattern likely related to its European native host in North America. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, the specimen from France collected in c. 1811 is the oldest herbarium specimen sequenced from kingdom Fungi. In conclusion, sequencing old herbarium specimens is an important tool that can be extrapolated to better understand plant–microbe evolution and to evaluate old type specimens to solidify the taxonomy of plant pathogenic fungi.

Plant Sciences↗
DOE OSTI2024

Transcriptomics reveal a mechanism of niche defense: two beneficial root endophytes deploy an antimicrobial GH18-CBM5 chitinase to protect their hosts

Effector secretion is crucial for root endophytes to establish and protect their ecological niche. We used time-resolved transcriptomics to monitor effector gene expression dynamics in two closely related Sebacinales, Serendipita indica and Serendipita vermifera, during symbiosis with three plant species, competition with the phytopathogenic fungus Bipolaris sorokiniana, and cooperation with root-associated bacteria. We observed increased effector gene expression in response to biotic interactions, particularly with plants, indicating their importance in host colonization. Some effectors responded to both plants and microbes, suggesting dual roles in intermicrobial competition and plant–microbe interactions. A subset of putative antimicrobial effectors, including a GH18-CBM5 chitinase, was induced exclusively by microbes. Functional analyses of this chitinase revealed its antimicrobial and plant-protective properties. We conclude that dynamic effector gene expression underpins the ability of Sebacinales to thrive in diverse ecological niches with a single fungal chitinase contributing substantially to niche defense.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Rethinking the soil core microbiome

The concept of a core microbiome emerged from host-associated research to describe microbial members or functions conserved across clearly defined spatial, temporal, and biological boundaries. In soil- and plant-associated microbiome research, however, the term has increasingly shifted toward analytically defined subsets selected using study-specific thresholds or criteria. Synthesizing recent literature and cross-site analyses of bioenergy crop field soils, we show that the original biological meaning of the core microbiome has been blurred by dataset-specific analytical criteria. Taxa designated as ‘core’ were highly sensitive to methodological choices and often reflected explanatory value rather than conserved biological membership. Moreover, many studies that identify taxonomic ‘core’ members interpret their significance in functional terms, suggesting that functional conservation may be the biological interest. Taxonomic conservation may not be the most biologically meaningful target in highly heterogeneous soil and rhizosphere systems, where functional conservation may persist despite taxonomic turnover. Accordingly, ‘core microbiome’ should be reserved for microbial components explicitly demonstrated to be conserved across defined spatial, temporal, and environmental dimensions and linked to conserved ecological functions, while taxa selected for explanatory value are better described as ‘explanatory subsets of taxa’. Greater terminological precision will improve cross-study comparability and strengthen ecological inference in plant–soil microbiome research.

bioenergy crops↗
DOE OSTI2022

Adaptive management of large-scale ecosystem restoration: increasing certainty of habitat outcomes in the Columbia River Estuary, U.S.A.

Ecological restoration programs in dynamic coastal environments can benefit from adaptive management, including an iterative process for identifying and addressing critical uncertainties. We highlight key developments under the three pillars that have increased the rate of restoration by the Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program (CEERP) over 20 years: science, coordination, and management. We show how such programs can be institutionalized to ensure that estuary ecosystems are better understood, conserved, and restored. The principal conservation effort under CEERP is to reconnect historical floodplain wetlands to the mainstem. The program also supports other restoration actions that demonstrate a high potential to benefit ecosystem function and endangered salmon populations, however, there is greater uncertainty regarding these less-utilized techniques. Through adaptive management, we address both technical uncertainty regarding benefits to the environmental resource and programmatic uncertainty pertaining to decision-making. Here, we examine three periods of CEERP growth to establish how complementary research and restoration actions have improved program outcomes over time. We highlight the tools and processes that were developed and integrated into the program to refine program strategy, improve project design, and maximize ecological benefits. CEERP supported 77 restoration projects and reconnected over 7,000 acres of floodplain habitat to the lower Columbia River between 2004 and 2021. Building on these successes, we outline current plans to better engage landowners and local communities, solicit new project types, and maintain enough flexibility within the program to adapt to new priorities.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Genomic factors shape carbon and nitrogen metabolic niche breadth across Saccharomycotina yeasts

Organisms exhibit extensive variation in ecological niche breadth, from very narrow (specialists) to very broad (generalists). Two general paradigms have been proposed to explain this variation: (i) trade-offs between performance efficiency and breadth and (ii) the joint influence of extrinsic (environmental) and intrinsic (genomic) factors. We assembled genomic, metabolic, and ecological data from nearly all known species of the ancient fungal subphylum Saccharomycotina (1154 yeast strains from 1051 species), grown in 24 different environmental conditions, to examine niche breadth evolution. We found that large differences in the breadth of carbon utilization traits between yeasts stem from intrinsic differences in genes encoding specific metabolic pathways, but we found limited evidence for trade-offs. Furthermore, these comprehensive data argue that intrinsic factors shape niche breadth variation in microbes.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Microbiomes Reduce Their Host’s Sensitivity to Interspecific Interactions

Description of the Earth’s microbiota has recently undergone a phenomenal expansion that has challenged basic assumptions in many areas of biology, including hominid evolution, human gastrointestinal and neurodevelopmental disorders, and plant adaptation to climate change. By using the classic model system of freshwater phytoplankton that has been drawn upon for numerous foundational theories in ecology, we show that microbiomes, by facilitating their host population, can also influence between-species interactions among their eukaryotic hosts. Between-species interactions, including competition for resources, has been a central tenet in the field of ecology because of its implications for the diversity and composition of communities and how this in turn shapes ecosystem functioning.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Characterization of intestinal fungal communities through ITS amplicon from metagenomic libraries of sea cucumber ( Holothuria glaberrima )

The brown rock sea cucumber (Holothuria glaberrima) microbiome is vital for understanding its ecological dynamics. This study focuses on the microbial composition and abundance of fungi across different intestinal regions of H. glaberrima, giving insights into host-microbe interactions and supporting future ecological and comparative studies on their regeneration capabilities.

16S↗
DOE OSTI2024

The direct and indirect drivers shaping RNA viral communities in grassland soils

ABSTRACT Recent studies have revealed diverse RNA viral communities in soils. Yet, how environmental factors influence soil RNA viruses remains largely unknown. Here, we recovered RNA viral communities from bulk metatranscriptomes sequenced from grassland soils managed for 5 years under multiple environmental conditions including water content, plant presence, cultivar type, and soil depth. More than half of the unique RNA viral contigs (64.6%) were assigned with putative hosts. About 74.7% of these classified RNA viral contigs are known as eukaryotic RNA viruses suggesting eukaryotic RNA viruses may outnumber prokaryotic RNA viruses by nearly three times in this grassland. Of the identified eukaryotic RNA viruses and the associated eukaryotic species, the most dominant taxa were Mitoviridae with an average relative abundance of 72.4%, and their natural hosts, Fungi with an average relative abundance of 56.6%. Network analysis and structural equation modeling support that soil water content, plant presence, and type of cultivar individually demonstrate a significant positive impact on eukaryotic RNA viral richness directly as well as indirectly on eukaryotic RNA viral abundance via influencing the co-existing eukaryotic members. A significant negative influence of soil depth on soil eukaryotic richness and abundance indirectly impacts soil eukaryotic RNA viral communities. These results provide new insights into the collective influence of multiple environmental and community factors that shape soil RNA viral communities and offer a structured perspective of how RNA virus diversity and ecology respond to environmental changes. IMPORTANCE Climate change has been reshaping the soil environment as well as the residing microbiome. This study provides field-relevant information on how environmental and community factors collectively shape soil RNA communities and contribute to ecological understanding of RNA viral survival under various environmental conditions and virus-host interactions in soil. This knowledge is critical for predicting the viral responses to climate change and the potential emergence of biothreats.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Giant Virus Infection Signatures Are Modulated by Euphotic Zone Depth Strata and Iron Regimes of the Subantarctic Southern Ocean

Viruses can alter the abundance, evolution, and metabolism of microorganisms in the ocean, playing a key role in water column biogeochemistry and global carbon cycles. Large efforts to measure the contribution of eukaryotic microorganisms (e.g., protists) to the marine food web have been made, yet the in situ activities of the ecologically relevant viruses that infect these organisms are not well characterized. Viruses within the phylum Nucleocytoviricota (“giant viruses”) are known to infect a diverse range of ecologically relevant marine protists, yet how these viruses are influenced by environmental conditions remains under-characterized. By employing metatranscriptomic analyses of in situ microbial communities along a temporal and depthresolved gradient, we describe the diversity of giant viruses at the Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS), a site within the subpolar Southern Ocean. Using a phylogeny-guided taxonomic assessment of detected giant virus genomes and metagenome-assembled genomes, we observed depth-dependent structuring of divergent giant virus families mirroring dynamic physicochemical gradients in the stratified euphotic zone. Analyses of transcribed metabolic genes from giant viruses suggest viral metabolic reprogramming of hosts from the surface to a 200-m depth. Lastly, using on-deck incubations reflecting a gradient of iron availability, we show that modulating iron regimes influences the activity of giant viruses in the field. Specifically, we show enhanced infection signatures of giant viruses under both iron-replete and iron-limited conditions. Collectively, these results expand our understanding of how the water column’s vertical biogeography and chemical surroundings affect an important group of viruses within the Southern Ocean

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Tetranucleotide frequencies differentiate genomic boundaries and metabolic strategies across environmental microbiomes

Microbiomes are constrained by physicochemical conditions, nutrient regimes, and community interactions across diverse environments, yet genomic signatures of this adaptation remain unclear. Metagenome sequencing is a powerful technique to analyze genomic content in the context of natural environments, establishing concepts of microbial ecological trends. Here, we developed a data discovery tool-a tetranucleotide-informed metagenome stability diagram-that is publicly available in the integrated microbial genomes and microbiomes (IMG/M) platform for metagenome ecosystem analyses. We analyzed the tetranucleotide frequencies from quality-filtered and unassembled sequence data of over 12,000 metagenomes to assess ecosystem-specific microbial community composition and function. We found that tetranucleotide frequencies can differentiate communities across various natural environments and that specific functional and metabolic trends can be observed in this structuring. Our tool places metagenomes sampled from diverse environments into clusters and along gradients of tetranucleotide frequency similarity, suggesting microbiome community compositions specific to gradient conditions. Within the resulting metagenome clusters, we identify protein-coding gene identifiers that are most differentiated between ecosystem classifications. We plan for annual updates to the metagenome stability diagram in IMG/M with new data, allowing for refinement of the ecosystem classifications delineated here. This framework has the potential to inform future studies on microbiome engineering, bioremediation, and the prediction of microbial community responses to environmental change. IMPORTANCE: Microbes adapt to diverse environments influenced by factors like temperature, acidity, and nutrient availability. We developed a new tool to analyze and visualize the genetic makeup of over 12,000 microbial communities, revealing patterns linked to specific functions and metabolic processes. This tool groups similar microbial communities and identifies characteristic genes within environments. By continually updating this tool, we aim to advance our understanding of microbial ecology, enabling applications like microbial engineering, bioremediation, and predicting responses to environmental change.

Kellom, Matthew↗
DOE OSTI2024

Functional insights of novel Bathyarchaeia reveal metabolic versatility in their role in peatlands of the Peruvian Amazon

ABSTRACT The decomposition of soil organic carbon within tropical peatlands is influenced by the functional composition of the microbial community. In this study, building upon our previous work, we recovered a total of 28 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) classified as Bathyarchaeia from the tropical peatlands of the Pastaza-Marañón Foreland Basin (PMFB) in the Amazon. Using phylogenomic analyses, we identified nine genus-level clades to have representatives from the PMFB, with four forming a putative novel family (“CandidatusPaludivitaceae”) endemic to peatlands. We focus on theCa. Paludivitaceae MAGs due to the novelty of this group and the limited understanding of their role within tropical peatlands. Functional analysis of these MAGs reveals that this putative family comprises facultative anaerobes, possessing the genetic potential for oxygen, sulfide, or nitrogen oxidation. This metabolic versatility can be coupled to the fermentation of acetoin, propanol, or proline. The other clades outsideCa. Paludivitaceae are putatively capable of acetogenesis andde novoamino acid biosynthesis and encode a high amount of Fe 3+ transporters. Crucially, theCa. Paludivitaceae are predicted to be carboxydotrophic, capable of utilizing CO for energy generation or biomass production. Through this metabolism, they could detoxify the environment from CO, a byproduct of methanogenesis, or produce methanogenic substrates like CO 2 and H 2 . Overall, our results show the complex metabolism and various lineages of Bathyarchaeia within tropical peatlands pointing to the need to further evaluate their role in these ecosystems. IMPORTANCE With the expansion of theCandidatusPaludivitaceae family by the assembly of 28 new metagenome assembled genomes, this study provides novel insights into their metabolic diversity and ecological significance in peatland ecosystems. From a comprehensive phylogenic and functional analysis, we have elucidated their putative unique facultative anaerobic capabilities and CO detoxification potential. This research highlights their crucial role in carbon cycling and greenhouse gas regulation. These findings are essential for resolving the microbial processes affecting peat soil stability, offering new perspectives on the ecological roles of previously underexplored and underrepresented archaeal populations.

Microbiology↗