The relationship between soil bacteria substrate utilisation patterns and the vegetation structure in temperate forests

Abstract

The aim of the study was to explore the relationship between the functional diversity pattern of soil bacteria and the vegetation diversity and structure in temperate forests (Poland). Pine-dominated forests occur on soils with lower pH, fewer nutrient contents (P, Na, Mg, Mn and K) and higher C/N and C/P ratios than beechdominated forests and mixed broadleaved forest with hornbeam and ash. Both forest type and soil horizon (O and A) strongly influenced bacterial catabolic activity and the number of substrates decayed on Biolog Ò ECO plates. Pine forest soil bacteria were less active and less functionally diverse than those in deciduous forest soils. The community-level physiological profiles (CLPPs) were dissimilar (one-way analysis of similarities) between pine and mixed deciduous forests, but only in the O soil horizon. Carboxylic acids primarily contributed to the average dissimilarity in CLPP between forests (the similarity percentage procedure); these substrates are preferentially used by pine forest soil bacteria. The canonical correspondence analysis indicated that soil pH, nitrogen and organic matter contents and plant diversity index H 0 plant were related to bacterial CLPP in the O soil horizon. Only for the soil O horizon, the Mantel test showed a clear relationship between vegetation structure and bacterial CLPP.

The Effects of Heavy Metals and Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons on Soil Bacterial Activity and Functional Diversity in the Upper Silesia Industrial Region (Poland)

“…The bacterial preference towards easily degradable C compounds on the studied soils may result from the characteristics of pine-delivered organic matter that dominated in the studied stands. It has been shown that the dominating tree species affect the soil bacterial metabolic profiles (Chodak et al 2015 ; Klimek et al 2016 ), and the preferential use of carboxylic acids by the microbial community was observed in pine soil (Yao et al 2006 ; Chodak et al 2015 ; Klimek et al 2016 ).…”

Detection of the Entomopathogenic Fungus Beauveria bassiana in the Rhizosphere of Wound-Stressed Zea mays Plants

“…ANOSIM is a non-parametric permutation procedure to compare between-groups and within-groups dissimilarities on multivariate data ( Clarke and Green, 1988 ). This procedure calculates an R statistic, wherein R = 0, the grouping of treatments is considered random (i.e., there is no interpretable grouping) and R = 1, if all replicates within groups are more similar to each other than any replicates between the groups ( Klimek et al, 2016 ). The overall or ‘global’ R value was consequently used to express differences as dissimilarity between isolate (BG11, FRh2, J18) and control treatments, and the wounded (W) and non-wounded (N) groups.…”

The Impacts of Vegetation Types and Soil Properties on Soil Microbial Activity and Metabolic Diversity in Subtropical Forests

“…One explanation might be that the soil physicochemical properties influence the soil microbial activity [20]. Higher nutrient contents, especially N and P, support a higher microbial biomass and may indirectly facilitate an increase of the soil bacteria [10,52]. Under the same temperature and precipitation of both areas, deciduous broadleaf trees produce more litter quantities and have a more rapid decomposition than coniferous trees, thus resulting in higher nutrient levels of deciduous broadleaf trees compared to soils under coniferous tree species [12].…”