Abstract:In order to address the problems of tailwater treatment in fishpond aquaculture in the Ningxia region and the scarcity of water resources in rice-crab co-culture systems, the bacterial community structure and soil environmental factors of a fishpond-rice-crab integrated co-culture model (RS) were compared and contrasted with the traditional Yellow River-irrigated rice-crab co-culture model (CK) as control. The primary environmental factors influencing alterations in the organization of the bacterial population were also identified. The composition and structural variations of soil bacterial communities under both CK and RS models from April to August were examined, together with their associations with soil physicochemical markers, using 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing techniques. The findings demonstrated that the RS model changed the species richness of soil bacteria while decreasing soil pH value and raising ammonium nitrogen and accessible phosphorus levels. The greatest Chao1 and Shannon diversity indices appeared in April, while the lowest appeared in May. Proteobacteria, Bacteroidota, and Firmicutes were the most prevalent bacterial phyla from April to August, with Pseudomonas being the most prevalent genus. The cumulative relative abundance of Pseudomonas was decreased by 7.61 percentage points, Thiobacillus was increased by 4.94 percentage points, and Unspecified_Bacteria was increased by 1.83 percentage points as compared with the CK model;changes in other taxa were within ±1 percentage point. Redundancy analysis showed that the most important variables influencing the top ten bacterial phyla were pH value, total nitrogen, ammonium nitrogen, total potassium, and organic matter concentration. Total potassium exhibited the highest explanatory power (23.67%) among them, exhibiting negative relationships with other phyla and positive correlations with Proteobacteria. In general, the top ten phyla showed a positive correlation with nitrate nitrogen concentration. As a result, the fishpond-rice-crab integrated co-culture paradigm optimized the makeup of the bacterial community, boosted bacterial species diversity, and greatly improved soil environmental conditions and structure.