Response of soil microbial community to plant composition changes in broad-leaved forests of the karst area in Mid-Subtropical China

PeerJ

article

Liling Liu¹  Ninghua Zhu¹  Guangyi Zhou²  Peng Dang¹  Xiaowei Yang¹  Liqiong Qiu¹  Muyi Huang¹  Yingyun Gong¹  Suya Zhao¹  Jie Chen² 

[1] Central South University of Forestry and Technology;Research Institute of Tropical Forestry;Jianfengling National Key Field Research Station for Tropical Forest Ecosystem

关键词: Vegetation composition;    Microbial community;    Soil nutrients;    Plant diversity;    Karst ecosystem;    Cryptomeria japonica;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.12739

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

The rapid growth and expansion ofCryptomeria japonica (Thunb. ex L. f.) D. Don in karst area strongly affects plant composition of native deciduous broad-leaved forest, which seriously threat ecosystem function and service. Given the importance of soil microorganisms in regulating nutrients cycling and plant species coexistence, understanding soil microbial attributes and their relationships with soil and vegetation features in forests harboring different C. japonica abundance will help understanding the drivers of ecosystem function changes. Here we examined the diversity and composition of soil bacterial and fungal communities and their correlations with plant diversity as well as soil physicochemical properties in karst broad-leaved forests with different relative abundances of C. japonica (i.e., a high, moderate, low and no proportion level with a stem density of 1,487, 538, 156 and 0 plant/hm2, respectively) in Mid-Subtropical China. We found that soil pH decreased while soil water content (SWC), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and total potassium (TK) tended to increase with the increase in C. japonica abundance. In contrast, soil available nitrogen (AN), available phosphorus (AP) and available potassium (AK) content declined by 26.1%∼49.3% under the high level of C. japonica abundance. A gradual decrease in relative abundance of Acidobacteria and Chloroflexi while a pronounced increase in relative abundance of Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were observed with increase of C. japonica abundance. Alternations in bacterial composition were closely related to changes in AP and AK, while the change of fungal structure was mainly related to SWC, soil organic carbon (SOC) and pH, indicating that bacterial community was sensitive to declines in soil available nutrients and fungal structure was sensitive to changes in soil physicochemical properties (i.e., pH and SWC) and organic carbon resource. Understory plants had the highest α-diversity in forest containing moderate abundance of C. japonica, which might be related to the high bacterial diversity. Our findings suggest conservation of soil bacterial and fungal taxa that are responsible for nutrients availability and carbon sequestration is of great significance for improving the resistance of natural deciduous broad-leaved forests to the rapid spread of C. japonica in karst areas. Moreover, Acidobacteria, Chloroflexi, Ascomycota and Basidiomycota are potential indicators for soil properties changes, which should be taken into consideration in karst forest managements.

【 授权许可】

CC BY