Soil Bacterial and Fungal Community Responses to Throughfall Reduction in a Eucalyptus Plantation in Southern China

Yubiao Lin,Qian He,Quan Qiu,Guangyu Wang,Ling Yang,Jiyue Li,Yan Su,Jiejun Kong

doi:10.3390/f13010037

Yubiao Lin, Qian He + Show 6 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/f13010037

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Abstract

In subtropical plantations in southern China, how soil microbial communities respond to climate change-induced drought is poorly understood. A field experiment was conducted in a subtropical Eucalyptus plantation to determine the impacts of 50% of throughfall reduction (TR) on soil microbial community composition, function, and soil physicochemical properties. Results showed that TR reduced soil water content (SWC) and soil available phosphorus (AP) content. TR significantly altered 196 bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs), most of them belonging to Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Proteobacteria, while there were fewer changes in fungal OTUs. At the phylum level, TR increased the relative abundance of Acidobacteria at 0–20 cm soil depth by 37.18%, but failed to influence the relative abundance of the fungal phylum. Notably, TR did not alter the alpha diversity of the bacterial and fungal communities. The redundancy analysis showed that the bacterial communities were significantly correlated with SWC, and fungal communities were significantly correlated with AP content. According to predictions of bacterial and fungal community functions using PICRUSt2 and FUNGuild platforms, TR had different effects on both bacterial and fungal communities. Overall, SWC and AP decreased during TR, resulting in greater changes in soil bacterial community structure, but did not dramatically change soil fungal community structure.

Highlights

Changes in precipitation will affect the biogeochemical cycle of terrestrial ecosystems as a result of global climate change [1]
In order to fill this gap, we investigated the response of soil microbial community composition and function to simulated throughfall reduction in a Eucalyptus plantation in southern subtropical China by establishing a fixed sample plot with throughfall reduction
We aimed to address the following questions: (i) Do changes in the throughfall reduction alter microbial community composition and function in the Eucalyptus plantation? (ii) How does the response vary of microbial groups to the throughfall reduction? We hypothesized that fungi would be more resistant to throughfall reduction than bacterial. (iii) What are the other soil factors that are altered by the throughfall reduction, and how would they be related to the responses of microbial community composition? We hypothesized that the change of soil C, N, and P availability caused by the throughfall reduction may indirectly shape the microbial community composition

Summary

Introduction

Changes in precipitation will affect the biogeochemical cycle of terrestrial ecosystems as a result of global climate change [1]. It has been reported that future predictions of precipitation patterns on a regional scale are uncertain. Global precipitation patterns, including the amount, intensity, and timing of rainfall, have been changing in almost all regions of the world over the last few decades [2]. The climate change model PRECIS simulation results show that the winter precipitation in southern China will decrease significantly in the future, resulting in summer floods and winter droughts [3]. Soil microorganisms have a significant feedback effect on the huge carbon pool of subtropical forest, but the current research lacks an understanding of the sensitivity of microbial communities to precipitation reduction

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