Responses of soil microbial and nematode communities to aluminum toxicity in vegetated oil-shale-waste lands

Abstract

Both soil nematodes and microorganisms have been shown to be sensitive bioindicators of soil recovery in metal-contaminated habitats; however, the underlying processes are poorly understood. We investigated the relationship among soil microbial community composition, nematode community structure and soil aluminum (Al) content in different vegetated aluminum-rich ecosystems. Our results demonstrated that there were greater soil bacterial, fungal and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal biomass in Syzygium cumini plantation, greater abundance of soil nematodes in Acacia auriculiformis plantation, and greater abundance of soil predatory and herbivorous nematodes in Schima wallichii plantation. The concentration of water-soluble Al was normally greater in vegetated than non-vegetated soil. The residual Al and total Al concentrations showed a significant decrease after planting S. cumini plantation onto the shale dump. Acid extractable, reducible and oxidisable Al concentrations were greater in S. wallichii plantation. Stepwise linear regression analysis suggests the concentrations of water-soluble Al and total Al content explain the most variance associated with nematode assembly; whereas, the abundance of early-successional nematode taxa was explained mostly by soil moisture, soil organic C and total N rather than the concentrations of different forms of Al. In contrast, no significant main effects of either Al or soil physico-chemical characteristics on soil microbial biomass were observed. Our study suggests that vegetation was the primary driver on soil nematodes and microorganisms and it also could regulate the sensitivity of bio-indicator role mainly through the alteration of soil Al and physico-chemical characteristics, and S. cumini is effective for amending the Al contaminated soils.