Document Type
Article
Subject Area(s)
Soil Microbiology; Arctic Regions; Bacteria (genetics, drug effects, isolation & purification, classification); Soil (chemistry); Anti-Bacterial Agents (pharmacology); Drug Resistance, Bacterial (genetics); Genes, Bacterial; Ecosystem
Abstract
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in soil is an ancient phenomenon with widespread spatial presence in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the natural processes shaping the temporal dissemination of AMR in soils are not well understood. We aimed to determine whether, how, and why AMR varies with soil age in recently deglaciated pioneer and developing Arctic soils using a space-for-time approach. Specifically, we assess how the magnitude and spread of AMR changes with soil development stages, including antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), mobile genetic elements (MGEs), and antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB). We showed that ARGs, MGEs, and ARB are present, and exhibit a non-uniform distribution in the developing soils. Their abundance generally increases with soil age but at different rates overall and across different glacier forefields. Our analyses suggest a strong positive relationship between soil age and ARGs and ARB, which we attribute to increased competition between microbes in older soils. We also observed a strong negative relationship between soil age and ARG diversity mediated by soil organic matter - suggesting facilitation due to the alleviation of nutrient limitation. These contrasting results suggest that both competition and facilitation can regulate AMR spread through time in the Arctic, but competition might be the stronger determinant of AMR spread.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in BMC microbiology, Volume 25, Issue 50, 2025.
APA Citation
Roy, S., Dawson, R. A., Bradley, J. A., & Hernández, M. (2025). Prevalence and dynamics of antimicrobial resistance in pioneer and developing Arctic soils. BMC Microbiology, 25(50).https://doi.org/10.1186/s12866-025-03745-7
Rights
© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.