Abstract
BackgroundLand use changes and related land management practices significantly alter soil physicochemical properties; however, their effects on the soil microbial community structure are still unclear. In this study, we used automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis to determine the fungal and bacterial community composition in soils from different land use areas in the Ethiopian highlands. Soil samples were collected from five areas with different land uses, natural forest, eucalyptus plantation, exclosure, grassland and cropland, which had all historically been natural forest.ResultsOur results showed a significant shift in the soil bacterial and fungal community composition in response to land use change. We also identified soil physicochemical factors corresponding to the changes in bacterial and fungal communities. Although most soil attributes, including soil organic carbon, total soil nitrogen, labile P, soil pH and soil aggregate stability, were related to the change in bacterial community composition, the total soil nitrogen and soil organic carbon had the strongest relationships. The change in fungal community composition was correlated with soil nutrients, organic carbon, soil nitrogen and particularly the labile P concentration.ConclusionsThe fungal community composition was likely affected by the alteration of vegetation cover in response to land use change, whereas the bacterial communities were mainly sensitive to changes in soil attributes. The study highlights the higher sensitivity of fungal communities than bacterial communities to land use changes.
Highlights
Land use changes and related land management practices significantly alter soil physicochemical properties; their effects on the soil microbial community structure are still unclear
We examined microbial community composition in the five land uses: (i) a natural forest, covering about 30 ha; (ii) a eucalyptus plantation composed of Eucalyptus camaldulensis, covering about 19 ha of land; (iii) a grassland characterized by no pasture management practices and an open grazing system that covers about 3 ha of land; (iv) a cropland characterized by dominant annual crop rotation practices that covers about 4 ha of land; and (v) an exclosure area covering about 2 ha of land [42]
Fungal Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) richness in soils of grassland samples (54) was significantly lower than OTU richness detected in soils of the eucalyptus plantation (87) and of natural forest (77)
Summary
Land use changes and related land management practices significantly alter soil physicochemical properties; their effects on the soil microbial community structure are still unclear. Changes in land use from natural forest to commercial plantation and conventional agricultural landscape is a main driver of biodiversity declines and deterioration of ecosystem services [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The effects of such transitions from the natural forest to other land uses have been shown to significantly alter soil microbial diversity and community composition, including protozoa, fungi, Delelegn et al BMC Ecol (2018) 18:58 interactions, makes the determination of the prime factors that regulate the microbial community composition difficult [18, 19]. The soil fungal community composition, for example, are not well considered in any African studies, nor are the effects and impact of human activities on these biological communities is unknown, and the need for conservation of belowground diversity may be overlooked [17]
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