Plant property regulates soil bacterial community structure under altered precipitation regimes in a semi-arid desert grassland, China

Variations of precipitation have great impacts on soil carbon cycle and decomposition of soil organic matter.Soil bacteria are crucial participants in regulating these ecological processes and vulnerable to altered precipitation.Studying the impacts of altered precipitation on soil bacterial community structure can provide a novel insight into the potential impacts of altered precipitation on soil carbon cycle and carbon storage of grassland.Therefore,soil bacterial community structure under a precipitation manipulation experiment was researched in a semi-arid desert grassland in Chinese Loess Plateau.Five precipitation levels,i.e.,control,reduced and increased precipitation by 40%and 20%,respectively(referred here as CK,DP40,DP20,IP40,and IP20)were set.The results showed that soil bacterial alpha diversity and rare bacteria significantly changed with altered precipitation,but the dominant bacteria and soil bacterial beta diversity did not change,which may be ascribed to the ecological strategy of soil bacteria.The linear discriminate analysis(LDA)effect size(LEfSe)method found that major response patterns of soil bacteria to altered precipitation were resource-limited and drought-tolerant populations.In addition,increasing precipitation greatly promoted inter-species competition,while decreasing precipitation highly facilitated inter-species cooperation.These changes in species interaction can promote different distribution ratios of bacterial populations under different precipitation conditions.In structural equation model(SEM)analysis,with changes in precipitation,plant growth characteristics were found to be drivers of soil bacterial community composition,while soil properties were not.In conclusion,our results indicated that in desert grassland ecosystem,the sensitive of soil rare bacteria to altered precipitation was stronger than that of dominant taxa,which may be related to the ecological strategy of bacteria,species interaction,and precipitation-induced variations of plant growth characteristics.

Soil fungistasis and its relations to soil microbial composition and diversity:A case study of a series of soils with different fungistasis

Fungistasis is one of the important approaches to control soil-borne plant pathogens.Some hypotheses about the mechanisms for soil fungistasis had been established,which mainly focused on the soil bacterial community composition,structure,diversity as well as function.In this study,the bacterial community composition and diversity of a series of soils treated by autoclaving,which coming from the same original soil sample and showing gradient fungistasis to the target soil-borne pathogen fungi Fusarium grami...

Effect of vegetation on soil bacteria and their potential functions for ecological restoration in the Hulun Buir Sandy Land,China

To date,much of research on revegetation has focused on soil microorganisms due to their contributions in the formation of soil and soil remediation process.However,little is known about the soil bacteria and their functions respond to the diverse vegetational types in the process of vegetation restoration.Effects of dominated vegetation,i.e.,Artemisia halodendron Turcz Ex Bess,Caragana microphylla Lam.,Hedysarum fruticosum Pall.and Pinus sylvestris L.on bacterial community structures and their potential functions in the Hulun Buir Sandy Land,China were determined using high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing and phylogenetic investigation of communities by reconstruction of unobserved states(PICRUSt)in 2015.Although the dominant phyla of soil bacterial community among different types of vegetation,including Proteobacteria,Actinobacteria,Acidobacteria,Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes,were similar,the relative abundance of these dominant groups significantly differed,indicating that different types of vegetation might result in variations in the composition of soil bacterial community.In addition,functional genes of bacterial populations were similar among different types of vegetation,whereas its relative abundance was significantly differed.Most carbon fixation genes showed a high relative abundance in P.sylvestris,vs.recalcitrant carbon decomposition genes in A.halodendron,suggesting the variations in carbon cycling potential of different types of vegetation.Abundance of assimilatory nitrate reduction genes was the highest in P.sylvestris,vs.dissimilatory nitrate reduction and nitrate reductase genes in A.halodendron,indicating higher nitrogen gasification loss and lower nitrogen utilization gene functions in A.halodendron.The structures and functional genes of soil bacterial community showed marked sensitivities to different plant species,presenting the potentials for regulating soil carbon and nitrogen cycling.

Strong partitioning of soil bacterial community composition and co-occurrence networks along a small-scale elevational gradient on Zijin Mountain

The elevational distributions of bacterial communities in natural mountain forests,especially along large elevational gradients,have been studied for many years.However,the distributional patterns that underlie variations in soil bacterial communities along small-scale elevational gradients in urban ecosystems are not yet well understood.Using Illumina MiSeq DNA sequencing,we surveyed soil bacterial communities at three elevations on Zijin Mountain in Nanjing City:the hilltop(300 m a.s.l.),the hillside(150 m a.s.l.),and the foot of the hill(0 m a.s.l.).The results showed that edaphic properties differed significantly with elevation.Bacterial community composition,rather than alpha diversity,strongly differed among the three elevations(Adonis:R2=0.12,P<0.01).Adonis and DistLM analyses demonstrated that bacterial community composition was highly correlated with soil pH,elevation,total nitrogen(TN),and dissolved organic carbon(DOC).The degree scores,betweenness centralities,and composition of keystone species were distinct among the elevations.These results demonstrate strong elevational partitioning in the distributions of soil bacterial communities along the gradient on Zijin Mountain.Soil pH and elevation together drove the smallscale elevational distribution of soil bacterial communities.This study broadens our understanding of distribution patterns and biotic co-occurrence associations of soil bacterial communities from large elevational gradients to short elevational gradients.

Bacterial communities in paddy soils changed by milk vetch as green manure: A study conducted across six provinces in South China

The use of green manures contributes to sustainable soil and nutrient management in agriculture;however, the responses of soil microbial communities to different fertilization regimes at the regional scale are uncertain. A study was undertaken across multiple sites and years in Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Henan,Hubei, and Fujian provinces of South China to investigate the effects of green manuring on the structure and function of soil bacterial communities in rice-green manure cropping systems. The study included four treatments: winter fallow with no chemical fertilizer as a control(NF), milk vetch as green manure without chemical fertilizer(GM), winter fallow and chemical fertilizer(CF), and a combination of chemical fertilizer and milk vetch(GMCF).Significant differences were found in the responses of soil microbial communities at different sites, with sampling sites explaining 72.33%(F = 36.59,P = 0.001) of the community composition variation. The bacterial communities in the soils from Anhui, Henan, and Hubei were broadly similar, while those from Hunan were distinctly different from other locations. The analysis of Weighted UniFrac distances showed that milk vetch changed soil microbial communities compared with winter fallow. Proteobacteria and Chloroflexi predominated in these paddy soils;however, the application of green manures increased the relative abundance of Actinobacteria. There was evidence showing that the functional microbes which play important roles in the cycling of soil carbon, nitrogen(N), and sulfur(S) changed after several years of milk vetch utilization(linear discriminant analysis score > 2). The abundance of methane-oxidizing bacteria and S-reducing bacteria increased, and microbes involved in N fixation, nitrification, and denitrification also increased in some provinces. We concluded that the application of milk vetch changed the bacterial community structure and affected the functional groups related to nutrient transformation in soils at a regional scale.