Soil microbiotic homogenization occurred after long‐term agricultural development in desert areas across northern China

Soil microbial communities respond significantly to long‐term agricultural development in desert areas. Because soil microbial communities are distinct in various deserts at different eco‐climate regions, their response patterns to agricultural development are diverse at a local scale. However, whether the different response patterns had some commonalities across various types of deserts at a larger spatial scale remained unclear. To address this question, historical soil samples, collected in different years from pairwise long‐term experimental plots (desert and farmland) at five field stations of the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network across northern China, were analyzed through high‐throughput sequencing approach. Here, we found that soil bacterial communities were sharply different between deserts and agricultural lands. Contrasting to desert soils with higher relative abundances of Actinobacteria and Firmicutes, agricultural soils harbored higher relative abundances of Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, and Planctomycetes and exhibited higher bacterial α‐diversity with less variation. More importantly, higher community similarities were found in agricultural lands for each station and all stations, suggesting that soil microbiotic homogenization occurred at both local and regional scales after long‐term agricultural development in desert areas. Further analyses revealed that the homogenization was due to the loss of desert‐endemic species and the range expansion of generalist species, which might result from the introduction of crops combined with agricultural practices. The soil microbiotic homogenization associated with the loss of endemic species should be paid special attention to because this might imply the decrease in ecological resilience to perturbations and might lead to rapid desertification in desert margin areas.