Different ecological patterns of abundant and rare microbial communities across wetlands formation and succession after land-use change.

Rare bacterial and fungal subcommunities show higher stability during wetland formation and succession, with α-diversity linked to stability only for rare taxa, including opposite trends for bacteria versus fungi.

• Why it matters: Distinct roles of abundant versus rare microbes are poorly resolved during land-use change, limiting ecological prediction and ecosystem management for newly formed wetlands.
• What they did: Along a land-use gradient from farmland to naturally successional wetlands and an artificially managed coal-mining subsidence wetland, the study compared abundant and rare bacterial and fungal community patterns using diversity, stability, β-diversity partitioning, co-occurrence networks, and multifunctionality analyses.
• The result: Rare subcommunities had stronger species replacement effects on β-diversity and increased potential microbial multifunctionality during succession, while artificial management reduced multifunctionality for both groups; dissolved organic carbon and pH best explained shifts in abundant versus rare subcommunities.

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