Succession of plant and soil microbial communities with restoration of abandoned land in the Loess Plateau, China

Abstract

Purpose There have been a number of studies on the succession of vegetation; however, the succession of soil microbes and the collaborative relationships between microbes and vegetation during land restoration remain poorly understood. The objectives of this study were to characterize soil microbial succession and to explore the collaborative mechanisms between microbes and vegetation during the restoration of abandoned land through quantitative ecology methods. Materials and methods The present research was carried out in the succession of a 5-year abandoned land and its conversion to Hippophae rhamnoides shrubs, Larix principisrupprechtii plantation, and a naturally regenerated forest (mixed forest). Soil bacterial, archaeal and fungal characteristics were tested by real-time quantitative PCR assays and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism. The richness, diversity, and evenness indices were employed to analyze plant and microbial communities' structure. The stability of plant and microbial communities was tested using Spearman's rank correlation. The relationships between the regeneration scenarios and environmental factors were determined through canonical correspondence analysis. Results and discussion The aboveground biomass was significantly different among the sites. Soil bacterial, archaeal, and fungal rRNA gene abundances did not increase significantly with increasing soil organic carbon content. There were higher correlation coefficients between plant and total microbial communities on the richness, diversity, and evenness indices and ratios of positive to negative association compared to ones between plant and individual bacteria, archaea, and fungi. Soil bulk density, clay, pH, and litter were the primary significant environmental factors affecting the structure of plant and microbial communities. The positive relationships between plant and soil bacteria, fungi, and total microbe communities, as well as the negative relationships between plant and archaea, were demonstrated. Conclusions The results suggested that plants promote the growth of soil bacteria and fungi during the process of community succession on a small scale; however, plants inhibit the growth of soil archaea.

Effects of regenerating vegetation on soil enzyme activity and microbial structure in reclaimed soils on a surface coal mine site

“…3, and Table 4). In previous studies on different regeneration scenarios in Loess Plateau, higher microbial abundance were from mixed forests than plantations (Li et al, 2013a,b;Li et al, 2013a). There were specific RFs for each reclaimed scenarios (Fig.…”

“…Richness, ShannonWiener diversity, Simpson diversity and Pielou evenness indices were computed according to the number and relative ratios of RFs (Li et al, 2013a).…”

“…Bissett et al (2011) reported that all soils showed similar levels of bacterial diversity although community structure (bacterial, archaeal, fungal) differed under all treatments. Bacteria played an important role in ecological stability during initial restoration period (Li et al, 2013a), and forest succession promoted soil fungal dominated community (Susyan et al, 2011). In addition, there are differences in ecological roles of archaea and bacteria in the same environments (Aller and Kemp, 2008).…”

“…We use primers labeled at the 5 0 -end with the reporter dye FAM (6-carboxyfluorescein) for T-RFLP analysis. The detailed information on primer, probe, and PCR condition were described in our previous study (Li et al, 2013a).…”

Linkage between community diversity of sulfate-reducing microorganisms and methylmercury concentration in paddy soil

“…1 Map of the study area and sampling locations in Wanshan Hg mining area (S1, S2, S3, and S4 represent site 1, site 2, site 3, and site 4, respectively) (Li et al 2013). For the T-RFLP analysis of dsrAB gene, the 5′ end of DSRAB_F forward primer was labeled with 5-carboxyfluorescein (FAM) for PCR amplification (Schmalenberger et al 2007).…”