Relations between bacterial communities and enzyme functions of two paddy soils

Abstract

Until recently, the relation between the microbial community structure and paddy soil enzyme functions has not been clear. Two types of paddy soil, located only 2 km apart and involved in the same field experiment, were used. We found a clear spatial effect on the bacterial community structure that could be related to the types of soil. The bacterial community structure was linked statistically to four indices of soil enzyme activity involving Gram‐positive and Gram‐negative bacterial phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs), suggesting that the bacterial community has a more important role than fungi and other eukaryotes in modulating enzyme function in paddy soil. Redundancy analysis also showed that the two soil bacterial communities regulated soil enzyme activity with different effects. The α‐diversity of the bacterial community was positively associated with invertase activity, and negatively associated with the biomass normalized urease and arylsulphatase activities. In addition, the differences in soil enzyme activities were closely linked to dominant optimal taxonomic units (OTUs), most of which were phylogenetically related to enzyme producers from Planctomycetes, Proteobacteria and Chloroflexi with different 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity levels. Our results suggested that the enzyme function of paddy soil was linked to both the diversity and composition of bacteria in this study.HighlightsWe quantified the relation between the soil enzyme functions and bacterial community. Enzyme activities of paddy soil correlated with G+ and G− PLFAs. Bacterial α‐diversity was correlated statistically with paddy soil enzyme function. Species of Planctomycetes, Proteobacteria and Chloroflexi comprised the primary enzyme regulators.