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Dynamics of Soil Bacterial and Fungal Communities During the Secondary Succession Following Swidden Agriculture IN Lowland Forests.

ABSTRACT: Elucidating dynamics of soil microbial communities after disturbance is crucial for understanding ecosystem restoration and sustainability. However, despite the widespread practice of swidden agriculture in tropical forests, knowledge about microbial community succession in this system is limited. Here, amplicon sequencing was used to investigate effects of soil ages (spanning at least 60 years) after disturbance, geographic distance (from 0.1 to 10 km) and edaphic property gradients (soil pH, conductivity, C, N, P, Ca, Mg, and K), on soil bacterial and fungal communities along a chronosequence of sites representing the spontaneous succession following swidden agriculture in lowland forests in Papua New Guinea. During succession, bacterial communities (OTU level) as well as its abundant (OTU with relative abundance > 0.5%) and rare (<0.05%) subcommunities, showed less variation but more stage-dependent patterns than those of fungi. Fungal community dynamics were significantly associated only with geographic distance, whereas bacterial community dynamics were significantly associated with edaphic factors and geographic distance. During succession, more OTUs were consistently abundant (n = 12) or rare (n = 653) for bacteria than fungi (abundant = 6, rare = 5), indicating bacteria were more tolerant than fungi to environmental gradients. Rare taxa showed higher successional dynamics than abundant taxa, and rare bacteria (mainly from Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, and Verrucomicrobia) largely accounted for bacterial community development and niche differentiation during succession.

SUBMITTER: Lin Q

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8215787 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The characteristics of plant and soil bacterial communities in forest ecosystems have been reported, but our understanding of the relationship between plant communities and soil bacteria in different stages of secondary tropical rainforest succession is still poor. In June 2018, three different natural successional stages of tropical lowland rainforests, early (33 years), early-mid (60 years), and mid successional stage (73 years), in Hainan Island, China, were selected for this study. By conducting field investigation and 16S rRNA gene high-throughput sequencing, the composition and diversity of tree communities, the niche overlap of tree species with legumes among tree species, and the diversity and composition of soil bacterial communities and co-occurrence networks within communities across the successional stages were investigated. The results showed that plant richness and species diversity increased significantly during the secondary succession of tropical lowland rainforests. The order of positive correlations between nitrogen-fixing legumes and other species in plant communities was early-mid > mid > early successional stage. Soil nutrient content and soil bacterial richness were highest in the early-mid stages of succession, followed by mid and early stages of succession. Organic matter (OM), total nitrogen (TN), alkali nitrogen (AN), and available phosphorus (AP) had a stronger positive impact on soil bacterial communities. Co-occurrence network analysis showed that with the advancement of rainforests succession, the negative correlation between soil bacterial species decreased, and the community stability increased. Overall, as a result of tropical lowland rainforest secondary natural succession, the richness and diversity of plant communities increased, which altered the living conditions of nitrogen-fixing legumes and the soil properties, and the network complexity of soil bacterial communities increased with the rising of rainforest soil nutrient content.

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Dynamics of Soil Bacterial and Fungal Communities During the Secondary Succession Following Swidden Agriculture IN Lowland Forests.

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