Tillage homogenizes soil bacterial communities in microaggregate fractions by facilitating dispersal

Abstract

Soil aggregation physically protects soil organic matter and promotes soil carbon persistence through microaggregate formation and organo-mineral associations. Tillage is a ubiquitous disturbance to arable soil that disrupts aggregation, thus affecting microbial resource availability, soil microhabitat conditions, and microbial interactions. We investigated how tillage affects bacterial community composition of soil microaggregate fractions (53–250 μm), specifically the free microaggregate fraction in bulk soil and the occluded microaggregate fraction within macroaggregates, using two long-term tillage vs. no-tillage experiments in southern WI, U.S., that represent two different silt loam soils (Alfisol and Mollisol). We applied 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing to characterize the effects of tillage on microaggregate bacterial communities by relating compositional changes and ecological community assembly patterns to various tillage-driven changes in the soil environment, including aggregate size distribution and carbon content. Tillage homogenized soil bacterial communities, as quantified by increased compositional similarity at both within-plot and between-plot scales, and community assembly was increasingly influenced by homogenizing dispersal with tillage. We did not identify major distinctions between bacterial communities of the free and occluded microaggregate fractions, thus highlighting how soil microaggregates readily shift between these operationally defined fractions in temperate annual cropping systems, where the soil environment is subject to drastic seasonal changes that are exacerbated by tillage. By identifying influential community assembly processes and analyzing communities in microaggregate fractions, we improve our understanding of the microbial response to soil disturbance, and thus the potential mechanisms through which disturbances like tillage affect soil carbon persistence.