Dataset Information

Impact of logging and forest conversion to oil palm plantations on soil bacterial communities in Borneo.

ABSTRACT: Tropical forests are being rapidly altered by logging and cleared for agriculture. Understanding the effects of these land use changes on soil bacteria, which constitute a large proportion of total biodiversity and perform important ecosystem functions, is a major conservation frontier. Here we studied the effects of logging history and forest conversion to oil palm plantations in Sabah, Borneo, on the soil bacterial community. We used paired-end Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, V3 region, to compare the bacterial communities in primary, once-logged, and twice-logged forest and land converted to oil palm plantations. Bacteria were grouped into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) at the 97% similarity level, and OTU richness and local-scale ?-diversity showed no difference between the various forest types and oil palm plantations. Focusing on the turnover of bacteria across space, true ?-diversity was higher in oil palm plantation soil than in forest soil, whereas community dissimilarity-based metrics of ?-diversity were only marginally different between habitats, suggesting that at large scales, oil palm plantation soil could have higher overall ?-diversity than forest soil, driven by a slightly more heterogeneous community across space. Clearance of primary and logged forest for oil palm plantations did, however, significantly impact the composition of soil bacterial communities, reflecting in part the loss of some forest bacteria, whereas primary and logged forests did not differ in composition. Overall, our results suggest that the soil bacteria of tropical forest are to some extent resilient or resistant to logging but that the impacts of forest conversion to oil palm plantations are more severe.

SUBMITTER: Lee-Cruz L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3837752 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Impact of logging and forest conversion to oil palm plantations on soil bacterial communities in Borneo.

Lee-Cruz Larisa L Edwards David P DP Tripathi Binu M BM Adams Jonathan M JM

Applied and environmental microbiology 20130920 23

Tropical forests are being rapidly altered by logging and cleared for agriculture. Understanding the effects of these land use changes on soil bacteria, which constitute a large proportion of total biodiversity and perform important ecosystem functions, is a major conservation frontier. Here we studied the effects of logging history and forest conversion to oil palm plantations in Sabah, Borneo, on the soil bacterial community. We used paired-end Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, V3 regi ...[more]

PMID: 24056463

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Project description:Rainforest conversion and expansion of plantations in tropical regions are associated with changes in animal communities and biodiversity decline. In soil, Collembola are one of the most numerous invertebrate groups that affect the functioning of microbial communities and support arthropod predators. Despite that, information on the impact of changes in land use in the tropics on species and trait composition of Collembola communities is very limited. We investigated the response of Collembola to the conversion of rainforest into rubber agroforestry ("jungle rubber"), rubber, and oil palm plantations in Jambi Province (Sumatra, Indonesia), a region which experienced one of the strongest recent deforestation globally. Collembola were sampled in 2013 and 2016 from the litter and soil layer using heat extraction, and environmental factors were measured (litter C/N ratio, pH, water content, composition of microbial community and predator abundance). In the litter layer, density and species richness in plantation systems were 25%-38% and 30%-40% lower, respectively, than in rainforest. However, in the soil layer, density, species richness, and trait diversity of Collembola were only slightly affected by land-use change, contrasting the response of many other animal groups. Species and trait composition of Collembola communities in litter and soil differed between each of the land-use systems. Water content and pH were identified as main factors related to the differences in species and trait composition in both litter and soil, followed by the density of micro- and macropredators. Dominant species of Collembola in rainforest and jungle rubber were characterized by small body size, absence of furca, and absence of intense pigmentation, while in plantations, larger species with long furca and diffuse or patterned pigmentation were more abundant. Overall, land-use change negatively affected Collembola communities in the litter layer, but its impact was lower in the soil layer. Several pantropical genera of Collembola (i.e., Isotomiella, Pseudosinella, and Folsomides) dominated across land-use systems, reflecting their high environmental adaptability and/or efficient dispersal, calling for studies on their ecology and genetic diversity. The decline in species richness and density of litter-dwelling Collembola with the conversion of rainforest into plantation systems calls for management practices mitigating negative effects of the deterioration of the litter layer in rubber plantations, but even more in oil palm plantations.

Project description:The expansion of oil palm plantations at the expense of tropical forests is causing declines in many species and altering ecosystem functions. Maintaining forest-dependent species and processes in these landscapes may therefore limit the negative impacts of this economically important industry. Protecting riparian vegetation may be one such opportunity; forest buffer strips are commonly protected for hydrological reasons, but can also conserve functionally important taxa and the processes they support.We surveyed leaf litter ant communities within oil palm-dominated landscapes in Sabah, Malaysia, using protein baits. As the scavenging activity of ants influences important ecological characteristics such as nutrient cycling and soil structure, we quantified species-specific rates of bait removal to examine how this process may change across land uses and establish which changes in community structure underlie observed shifts in activity.Riparian reserves had similar ant species richness, community composition and scavenging rates to nearby continuous logged forest. Reserve width and vegetation structure did not affect ant species richness significantly. However, the number of foraging individuals decreased with increasing reserve width, and scavenging rate increased with vegetation complexity.Oil palm ant communities were characterized by significantly lower species richness than logged forest and riparian reserves and also by altered community composition and reduced scavenging rates.Reduced scavenging activity in oil palm was not explained by a reduction in ant species richness, nor by replacement of forest ant species by those with lower per species scavenging rates. There was also no significant effect of land use on the scavenging activity of the forest species that persisted in oil palm. Rather, changes in scavenging activity were best explained by a reduction in the mean rate of bait removal per individual ant across all species in the community.Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that riparian reserves are comparable to areas of logged forest in terms of ant community composition and ant-mediated scavenging. Hence, in addition to protecting large continuous areas of primary and logged forest, maintaining riparian reserves is a successful strategy for conserving leaf litter ants and their scavenging activities in tropical agricultural landscapes.

Dataset Information

Impact of logging and forest conversion to oil palm plantations on soil bacterial communities in Borneo.

Publications

Impact of logging and forest conversion to oil palm plantations on soil bacterial communities in Borneo.

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