Maize residue retention shapes soil microbial communities and co-occurrence networks upon freeze-thawing cycles

Maize residue retention is an effective agricultural practice for improving soil fertility in black soil region, where suffered from long freezing-thawing periods and intense freeze-thawing (FT) cycles. However, very few studies have examined the influence of maize residue retention on soil microbial communities under FT cycles. We investigated the response of soil microbial communities and co-occurrence networks to maize residue retention at different FT intensities over 12 cycles using a microcosm experiment conditioned in a temperature incubator. Our results indicated that maize residue retention induced dramatic shifts in soil archaeal, bacterial and fungal communities towards copiotroph-dominated communities. Maize residue retention consistently reduced soil fungal richness across all cycles, but this effect was weaker for archaea and bacteria. Normalized stochastic ratio analysis revealed that maize residue retention significantly enhanced the deterministic process of archaeal, bacterial and fungal comm