Standing Vegetation Exceeds Soil Microbial Communities in Soil Type Indication: A Procrustes Test of Four Salt-Affected Pastures

Péter Csontos,Júlia Tamás,Péter Ragályi,Tibor Kalapos,Tibor Szili-Kovács,Ákos Mjazovszky,Márton Mucsi,Gergely Pápay,Károly Penksza

doi:10.3390/agronomy11081652

Abstract

Organisms with different life histories are able to act as indicators of different characteristics of their environment. Here, we compared the precision of habitat indication by the vegetation and soil microbial communities in four salt-affected pastures: annual open salt sward, Pannonic Puccinellia limosa hollow, Artemisia saline puszta and grassy saline puszta. Dissimilarity of habitats was evaluated by standardized principal component analysis (PCA) based on four different datasets: catabolic profiles of microbial communities in June (a) and September (b), composition of vascular vegetation (c) and physical and chemical properties of the soil (d). Procrustes analysis was used to quantify the resemblance between pairs of PCA ordinations based on soil properties (d) and various biotic communities (a, b, c). PCA ordination based on vegetation most closely matched the soil data-based ordination, thus vegetation appears to better indicate habitat conditions than soil microbial communities do. For microbial communities, a better agreement with the soil data-based ordination was reached in September than in June. Most probably, the long-lived sedentary habit of perennial plants in these communities requires adaptation to long-term average habitat conditions. In contrast, short-lived soil microbes can quickly follow environmental changes, thus the composition of soil microbial communities better reflect actual soil conditions.

Highlights

Four characteristic habitat types were chosen as study sites for detailed soil, vegetation and soil microbiome investigations: (1) annual open salt sward—Lepidio crassifolii-Camphorosmetum annuae (CAM), (2) Pannonic Puccinellia limosa hollow—Lepidio crassifolii-Puccinellietum limosae (PUC), (3) Artemisia saline puszta—
The annual open salt sward (CAM) and the Pannonic Puccinellia limosa hollow (PUC) were positioned strikingly close to each other (Figure 5A), whereas for September data, habitat types were more evenly distributed, with CAM and Achilleo setaceae-Festucetum pseudovinae (ACH) appearing at the two ends of the gradient (Figure 5B)
In the principal component analysis (PCA) ordination based on the vegetation survey, the four habitat types were sorted by yet another pattern

Summary

Introduction

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/One of the key principles in ecology is the general indication principle, which says that with its presence, every organism has an indicative role towards the environment where it occurs. Beyond its presence, the organism’s phenological stage, physiological status and other traits also carry information [1]. Similarly, communities of various biota types (microbes, plants, animals) are also indicative of their environment, and most often, these multi-species assemblages reflect the state of the environment in a more sophisticated way than individual species do [2]. Vegetation ecologists have long been studying spatial patterns of vegetation zones along various environmental gradients [3,4,5,6]. As instrumental

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Conclusion