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Responses of soil microbial and nematode communities to aluminum toxicity in vegetated oil-shale-waste lands

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Abstract

Both soil nematodes and microorganisms have been shown to be sensitive bioindicators of soil recovery in metal-contaminated habitats; however, the underlying processes are poorly understood. We investigated the relationship among soil microbial community composition, nematode community structure and soil aluminum (Al) content in different vegetated aluminum-rich ecosystems. Our results demonstrated that there were greater soil bacterial, fungal and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal biomass in Syzygium cumini plantation, greater abundance of soil nematodes in Acacia auriculiformis plantation, and greater abundance of soil predatory and herbivorous nematodes in Schima wallichii plantation. The concentration of water-soluble Al was normally greater in vegetated than non-vegetated soil. The residual Al and total Al concentrations showed a significant decrease after planting S. cumini plantation onto the shale dump. Acid extractable, reducible and oxidisable Al concentrations were greater in S. wallichii plantation. Stepwise linear regression analysis suggests the concentrations of water-soluble Al and total Al content explain the most variance associated with nematode assembly; whereas, the abundance of early-successional nematode taxa was explained mostly by soil moisture, soil organic C and total N rather than the concentrations of different forms of Al. In contrast, no significant main effects of either Al or soil physico-chemical characteristics on soil microbial biomass were observed. Our study suggests that vegetation was the primary driver on soil nematodes and microorganisms and it also could regulate the sensitivity of bio-indicator role mainly through the alteration of soil Al and physico-chemical characteristics, and S. cumini is effective for amending the Al contaminated soils.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Prof. Guohui Kong for field sampling and Dr. Paul Kardol, Professor Howard Ferris, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This study was financially supported by the program of “Ex situ plant conservation and soil biotic interactions” sponsored by Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y121021001, Y121021004), Natural Science Fund (31100385) sponsored by Natural Science Foundation of China and Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars sponsored by Natural Science Foundation of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 723 Xingke Road, Tianhe District, Guangzhou, 510650, China

    Yuanhu Shao, Weixin Zhang, Zhanfeng Liu, Yuxin Sun, Jianping Wu, Lixia Zhou, Hanping Xia & Shenglei Fu

  2. Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yuxin Sun & Jianping Wu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Organic Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510640, China

    Yuxin Sun

  4. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Dima Chen

  5. Department of Plant & Soil Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, 05405, USA

    Deborah A. Neher

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  1. Yuanhu Shao
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Correspondence to Shenglei Fu.

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Shao, Y., Zhang, W., Liu, Z. et al. Responses of soil microbial and nematode communities to aluminum toxicity in vegetated oil-shale-waste lands. Ecotoxicology 21, 2132–2142 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-012-0966-4

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