Comparison of soil microbial communities inhabiting vineyards and native sclerophyllous forests in central Chile

Abstract

Natural ecosystems provide services to agriculture such as pest control, soil nutrients, and key microbial components. These services and others in turn provide essential elements that fuel biomass productivity. Responsible agricultural management and conservation of natural habitats can enhance these ecosystem services. Vineyards are currently driving land‐use changes in many Mediterranean ecosystems. These land‐use changes could have important effects on the supporting ecosystems services related to the soil properties and the microbial communities associated with forests and vineyard soils. Here, we explore soil bacterial and fungal communities present in sclerophyllous forests and organic vineyards from three different wine growing areas in central Chile. We employed terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms (T‐RFLP) to describe the soil microbial communities inhabiting native forests and vineyards in central Chile. We found that the bacterial community changed between the sampled growing areas; however, the fungal community did not differ. At the local scale, our findings show that fungal communities differed between habitats because fungi species might be more sensitive to land‐use change compared to bacterial species, as bacterial communities did not change between forests and vineyards. We discuss these findings based on the sensitivity of microbial communities to soil properties and land‐use change. Finally, we focus our conclusions on the importance of naturally derived ecosystem services to vineyards.

Metagenomic analysis exploring taxonomic and functional diversity of soil microbial communities in Chilean vineyards and surrounding native forests

“…Comparing bacterial phyla and genera, we did not find differences in relative abundances between forest and vineyard soils. Additionally, we found that diversity indices and microbial community structure were similar between forest and vineyard soils; this agrees with our previous work performed using T-RFLPs (Castañeda et al, 2015). Conversely, these findings differ from previous evidence suggesting that bacterial communities differ between forest and managed soils (García-Orenes et al, 2013).…”

“…From a comparative point-of-view, we found similar fungal abundance between forest and vineyard soils. Interestingly, our previous work employing T-RFLPs showed that fungal community structure differed between forest and vineyard soils (Castañeda et al, 2015); this agrees with another T-RFLP-based study that shows that fungal diversity differs between native Eucalyptus forests and Pinus plantations in Australia (Kasel, Bennett & Tibbits, 2008). It should be noted that the lack of differences in fungal abundances in the present study might be related to the low representation of fungal sequences in the soil samples.…”

“…Although Mediterranean Chile is one of the most important wine-producing regions and the area occupied by vineyards in Chile has rapidly expanded (Viers et al, 2013), there are very few studies exploring the microbial diversity of these vineyard soils (but see Aballay, Maternsson & Persson, 2011; Castañeda et al, 2015). Recently, Castañeda et al (2015) have shown that the soil bacterial communities in native forests and vineyards are similar, whereas the fungal communities differ between the habitats. This study employed T-RFLPs, which are reliable technique but do not provide deep taxonomic resolution or information about the metabolic functioning of the microbial community.…”

Vineyard soil bacterial diversity and composition revealed by 16S rRNA genes: Differentiation by vineyard management

“…Castañeda et al, 2015;Drenovsky et al, 2010;Steenwerth et al, 2003). Land-use effects on soil microbial communities are thought to be mediated mostly through alteration of soil properties.…”

Planning for the conservation and management of ecosystem services in Central Chile

“…Variables such as infrastructure inside protected areas (Pullin et al 2013), transport options to protected areas as Chile boast an extensive public transportation network (Spenceley et al 2015), biophysical attributes such as climate and elevation, and sociodemographic characteristics at the individual level such as age, gender and education (Booth et al 2010) could also drive visitation patterns. We were unable to identify clear (Castañeda et al 2015), and the wine industry is interested in environmentally-friendly practices, setting aside native forest for conservation, and ecotourism (Merelender et al 2014). The forestry industry, through engagement with the Forest Stewardship Council certification program, is also setting aside an important amount of native forest for conservation, especially in the Nahuelbuta coastal range (Pauchard et al 2007).…”