Fig. 4: Drivers for the AS resistomes.
a Normalized stochasticity ratio (NST) quantifies the relative importance of stochasticity in governing resistomes. Sample size: n = 6, 59, 14, 20, 106, and 21 samples for Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America, and South America, respectively. b The Variance partition analysis (VPA) results indicated that the relative contributions of geographic distance (Geo), environmental variables (ENV), and their interactions to the variation of the AS resistomes all reached a significant level (two-sided p < 0.05). c PLS models of the relationships among microbiome (PC1 of bacterial community structure), resistome (the total ARG abundance, PC1 of ARG composition, abundances of the top three resistance mechanisms), the abundance of MGEs located near (< 10 kb) ARGs, ARG-correlated environmental variables, and ecosystem functions (the removal rate of BOD, COD, total nitrogen, total phosphorus). Directions for all arrows are from independent variable to a dependent variable in the forward selected PLS models (p < 0.05); only the variables with variable influence on projection > 1 are presented. The numbers near the pathway arrow indicate the proportion of variance explained for every dependent variable, with the top row representing the partial R2 index based on PLS and the bottom row representing Pearson correlation R2. The asterisks denote the significance levels with *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05 and * p <0.10 (two-sided). The colors of pathways are related to the positive (blue) or negative (red) relationships. The widths of pathways are related to the partial R2 index. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
