Industrial development as a key factor explaining variances in soil and grass phyllosphere microbiomes in urban green spaces

Abstract Microbiota in urban green spaces underpin ecosystem services that are essential to environmental health and human wellbeing. However, the factors shaping the microbial communities in urban green spaces, especially those associated with turf grass phyllosphere, remain poorly understood. The lack of this knowledge greatly limits our ability to assess ecological, social and recreational benefits of urban green spaces in the context of global urbanization. In this study, we used amplicon sequencing to characterize soil and grass phyllosphere bacterial communities in 40 urban green spaces and three minimally disturbed national parks in Victoria, Australia. The results indicated that urbanization might have shown different impacts on soil and grass phyllosphere microbial communities. The bacterial diversity in soil but not in grass phyllosphere was significantly higher in urban green spaces than in national parks. Principal coordinate analysis revealed significant differences in the overall patterns of bacterial community composition between urban green spaces and national parks for both soil and grass phyllosphere. Industrial development, as represented by the number of industries in the region, was identified as a key driver shaping the bacterial community profiles in urban green spaces. Variation partitioning analysis suggested that industrial factors together with their interaction with other factors explained 20% and 28% of the variances in soil and grass phyllosphere bacterial communities, respectively. The findings highlight the importance of industrial development in driving the spatial patterns of urban microbiomes, and have important implication for the management of microbiomes in urban green spaces.