Abstract
Altitudinally-defined climate conditions provide specific vegetation types and soil environments that could influence soil microbial communities, which in turn may affect microbial residues. However, the knowledge is limited in terms of the degree to which microbial communities and residues present and differ along altitude. In this study, we examined the soil microbial communities and residues along the northern slope of Changbai Mountain, China using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) and amino sugar analysis, respectively. Soil samples were taken from five different vegetation belts defined by climates. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed substantial differences in soil microbial community composition among study sites, appeared to be driven primarily by soil pH and C/N ratio on the first principal component (PC1) which accounted for 50.7% of the total sample variance. The alpine tundra was separated from forest sites on the second principal component (PC2) by a signifiscantly higher amount of fungal PLFA (18:2ω6,9). Soil pH and C/N ratio were also correlated with the ratios of Gram-positive to Gram-negative bacteria (Gm+/Gm−), glucosamine to galactosamine (GluN/GalN), and glucosamine to muramic acid (GluN/MurA). Both total PLFAs and amino sugars were positively correlated with soil organic carbon, inorganic nitrogen, available phosphorus and potassium. We concluded that soil pH and C/N ratio were the most important drivers for microbial community structure and amino sugar pattern, while substrate availability was of great importance in determining the concentrations of microbial communities and residues. These findings could be used to facilitate interpretation of soil microbial community and amino sugar data derived from measurements in latitude or managed forests.
Highlights
Soil microorganisms are of great importance to carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling and storage [1], [2], ecosystem functioning [3], and global climate change [4]
mean annual temperature (MAT) decreases and mean annual precipitation (MAP) increases with increasing elevation, there was no altitudinal changing trend for these soil properties
If we excluded site 2 from the study sites, a significant decrease was observed in soil organic C (SOC) with increasing altitude (P,0.05, Table 1)
Summary
Soil microorganisms are of great importance to carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling and storage [1], [2], ecosystem functioning [3], and global climate change [4]. Our understanding of soil microorganisms and their interactions with environmental factors is improving; the influences of climatic regimes on soil microbial communities and residues are still insufficiently investigated, with some existing studies on latitude [15,16,17] but little attention to altitude. Temperature gradients in mountains may represent an analogue to those related to latitude since the mean annual temperature (MAT) decreases with increasing in both altitude and latitude. This makes mountain regions well-suited for the study of climate impacts because of the pronounced climatic gradients on a comparatively small scale [18]
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