Proximate grassland and shrub-encroached sites show dramatic restructuring of soil bacterial communities.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Changes in aboveground community composition and diversity following shrub encroachment have been studied extensively. Recently, shrub encroachment was associated with differences in belowground bacterial communities relative to non-encroached grassland sites hundreds of meters away. This spatial distance between grassland and shrub sites left open the question of how soil bacterial communities associated with different vegetation types might differ within the same plot location.

Methods

We examined soil bacterial communities between shrub-encroached and adjacent (one m apart) grassland soils in Chinese Inner Mongolian, using high-throughput sequencing method (Illumina, San Diego, CA, USA).

Results

Shrub-encroached sites were associated with dramatic restru

SUBMITTER: Xiang X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6644630 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature