Arsenic pollution from human activities drives changes in soil microbial community characteristics

Soil arsenic (As) pollution not only decreases plant productivity but also soil quality, in turn hampering sustainable agricultural development. Despite the negative effects of As contamination on rice yield and quality being reported widely, the responses of microbial communities and co‐occurrence networks in paddy soil to As pollution have not been explored. Here, based on high‐throughput sequencing technologies, we investigated bacterial abundance and diversity in paddy soils with different levels of As contamination, and constructed associated microbial co‐occurrence networks. As pollution reduced soil bacterial diversity significantly (p