Abstract
Regarding rubber tree plantations, researchers lack a basic understanding of soil microbial communities; specifically, little is known about whether or not soil microbial variation is correlated with succession in these plantations. In this paper, we used high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene to investigate the diversity and composition of the soil bacterial communities in a chronosequence of rubber tree plantations that were 5, 10, 13, 18, 25, and 30 years old. We determined that: (1) Soil bacterial diversity and composition show changes over the succession stages of rubber tree plantations. The diversity of soil bacteria were highest in 10, 13, and 18 year-old rubber tree plantations, followed by 30 year-old rubber tree plantations, whereas 5 and 25 year-old rubber tree plantations had the lowest values for diversity. A total of 438,870 16S rDNA sequences were detected in 18 soil samples from six rubber tree plantations, found in 28 phyla, 66 classes, 139 orders, 245 families, 355 genera, and 645 species, with 1.01% sequences from unclassified bacteria. The dominant phyla were Acidobacteria, Proteobacteria, Chloroflexi, Actinobacteria, and Verrucomicrobia (relative abundance large than 3%). There were differences in soil bacterial communities among different succession stages of rubber tree plantation. (2) Soil bacteria diversity and composition in the different stages was closely related to pH, vegetation, soil nutrient, and altitude, of which pH, and vegetation were the main drivers.
Highlights
The rubber tree is a typical tropical rain forest species, native to the Amazon, and is found in more than forty countries and regions in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America
The vegetation biomass was highest in 5 year-old rubber tree plantations, significantly (P < 0.01) higher than in 10, 13, 18, and 30 year-old rubber tree plantations, followed by the 13, 18, and 25 year-old plantations, the vegetation biomass of 10 year-old plantations was significantly (P < 0.01) lower than 5, 13, 18, and 25 year-old rubber tree plantations (Table 1)
The characteristics of vegetation are affected by management measures, such as weeding and herbicide use, which would prevent any natural succession in rubber plantations to be fully reflected
Summary
The rubber tree is a typical tropical rain forest species, native to the Amazon, and is found in more than forty countries and regions in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America. Previous studies have shown that large-scale planting of rubber trees bring some negative effects to the regional ecological environment, such as soil erosion (Wen et al, 2008; Luo and Liu, 2012), biodiversity decreases (Li et al, 2007; Cotter et al, 2012; Ahrends et al, 2015; Zheng et al, 2015), soil fertility decreases (Meng et al, 2001; Zhang and Zhou, 2009; Li et al, 2012), soil organic carbon and microbial biomass loss (Zhang and Zhang, 2003; Yang et al, 2004; Blecourt et al, 2014), etc. Most of the first-generation rubber tree plantations in China were established on the natural vegetation of secondary forest or tropical shrub grassland. Given long-term large-scale alternative natural vegetation, accompanied by the interference of tapping, fertilization, land clearing and other human activities, one must question whether these factors will impact the soil microorganisms
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