Abstract
Based on the importance and sensitivity of microbial communities to changes in the forest ecosystem, soil microorganisms can be used to indicate the health of the forest system. The metagenome sequencing was used to analyze the changes of microbial communities between natural and plantation Castanea henryi forests for understanding the effect of forest types on soil microbial communities. Our result showed the soil microbial diversity and richness were higher in the natural forests than in the plantation. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Acidobacteria are the dominant categories in the C. henryi rhizosphere, and Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were significantly enriched in the natural forest while Acidobacteria was significantly enriched in the plantation. Meanwhile, the functional gene diversity and the abundance of functions in the natural forest were higher than that of the plantation. Furthermore, we found that the microbial network in the natural forests had more complex than in the plantation. We also emphasized the low-abundance taxa may play an important role in the network structure. These results clearly showed that microbial communities, in response to different forest types, provide valuable information to manipulate microbiomes to improve soil conditions of plantation.
Highlights
Soil microorganisms are an important part of the soil ecosystem [1–3]
These results showed that the network structure in the natural forests was more complex and microorganisms in the network were mainly synergistic, while the network structure in the plantation was simpler and microorganisms in the network show strong competitiveness
Acidobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Actinobacteria are the three dominant phyla, and the abundance was affected by different forest types and cultivated varieties
Summary
Soil microorganisms are an important part of the soil ecosystem [1–3]. The diversity of soil microbial composition and function play a critical role in maintaining soil productivity and stability, such as nutrient cycling [4,5], and pollutant degradation [6,7]. Due to the complexity of forest soil ecosystem, vegetation types [14,15], fertilization [16,17], irrigation [18,19], and land-use type [20] have a great impact on the number and species of soil microorganisms. The conversion of natural forest to poplar forest plantation reduced the organic matter content and humidity values and lowered the diversity of soil microbial communities [21]. After the natural forest was transformed into rubber plantation, the content of soil organic matter and total nitrogen decreased and the abundance of Actinomycetes, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, fungi, bacteria and protozoa decreased significantly [22].
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