Abstract
Land-use change significantly impacts biodiversity, but its effects on the gut microbiomes of soil invertebrates remain poorly understood. We investigated how forest conversion to rubber plantations alters bacterial and fungal diversity, composition, and function in termite guts within a biodiversity hotspot Xishuangbanna, China. Our results showed that termites from natural forests harbored higher gut bacterial diversity than those from plantations, with effects varying across host species. Fungal diversity was shaped primarily by host species identity, with Odontotermes yunnanensis exhibiting the highest diversity index. While termite species solely governed bacterial community composition, both termite species and forest type shaped fungal composition. Fungal community variation correlated with local soil properties, whereas bacterial variation only associated with soil pH. Termites shared 17% of core gut bacteria (e.g., Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Mycobacterium) but 100% of fungi with the environment. Co-occurrence networks exhibited species-specific responses to forest conversion. Host species (Ancistrotermes and Odontotermes) predicted bacterial functional potential, but both forest type and host species influenced fungal functional potential. These findings demonstrate that termite gut microbiome responses to land-use change are multifaceted and taxon-specific, highlighting their role in ecosystem functional resilience under anthropogenic disturbance.
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Data availability
Data available from the Dryad Digital Repository with http://datadryad.org/share/fnKA1xj1Z9F2f3p1hMETJdP-fepZMKtPgnWnenZCKAU
The whole raw and processed data available from the https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31602532. Amplicon sequences are available on the NCBI sequence read archive under the PRJNA1437508.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Chen Defu, Chen Zhiling and Center for Gardening and Horticulture, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences for field and laboratory assistance. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41977057, 32201421), the Fundamental and Interdisciplinary Disciplines Breakthrough Plan of the Ministry of Education of China (JYB2025XDXM902), NSFC-UNEP (42061144005), Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (JCYJ20240813151036047) and research grant of the Sun Yat-sen University Bairen Plan (77010-18841290).
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Z.J., Y.M., and S.L. conceived the idea of the study and designed the study; Z.J., Y.M., and S.L. conducted the data analysis and wrote the paper; Z.J., Y.M., and S.L. collected the data; W.W., J.B., F.C., S.M., S.X., and X.Y. contributed to the writing (review and editing). All authors revised the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Jia, Z., Meng, Y., Wang, W. et al. Differential responses of termite gut bacterial and fungal community to tropical forest conversion. Commun Biol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09939-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09939-7
