Native fungal community remains resilient during bioremediation of DBP pollution by exogenous Gordonia phthalatica QH-11^T

Microbial bioremediation is a highly effective method to degrade phthalates in the environment. However, the response of native microbial communities to the exogenously introduced microorganism remains unknown. In this study, the native fungal community was monitored by amplicon sequencing of the fungal ITS region during the restoration process of the di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP)-contaminated soils with Gordonia phthalatica QH-11^T. Our results showed that the diversity, composition, and structure of the fungal community in the bioremediation treatment did not differ from the control, and no significant correlations were found between number of Gordonia and variation of fungal community. It was also observed that DBP pollution initially increased the relative abundance of plant pathogens and soil saprotrophs first, but their proportions returned to the initial level. Molecular ecological network analysis showed that DBP pollution increased the network complexity, while the network was not significantly altered by bioremediation. Overall, the introduction of Gordonia was shown to not have a long-term impact on the native soil fungal community. Therefore, this restoration method can be considered safe in terms of soil ecosystem stability. The present study provides a deeper insight into the effect of bioremediation on fungal communities and provides an extended basis to further explore the ecological risks of introducing exogenous microorganisms.