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Bacterial, fungal, and archaeal community assembly patterns and their determining factors across three subalpine stands at different stages of natural restoration after clear-cutting

  • Soils, Sec 1 • Soil Organic Matter Dynamics and Nutrient Cycling • Research Article
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Abstract

Purpose

The knowledge regarding how different soil microbial groups change in subalpine forest areas after clear-cutting is limited. To bridge this gap, we studied the change patterns of the different soil microbial community assemblies and their determining factors in subalpine areas.

Materials and methods

Field measurements and sampling were conducted in three stands at different stages of natural restoration (BF, broadleaf forest; MF, mixed coniferous and broadleaf forest; and PCF, primeval coniferous forest) after clear-cutting in western Sichuan Province, China. Three soil microbial group (bacteria, fungi, and archaea) community assemblies, edaphic properties, soil nematodes, tree diameter at breast height, plant richness, and understory vegetation biomass were examined and statistically analyzed.

Results and discussion

The α-diversity of the three microbial groups in the BF and MF stands was significantly higher than that in the PCF stand. The difference between the stands was greater than the difference within the stands for all three microbial groups. The changes in the three microbial groups were all significantly associated with shifts in soil carbon, soil total nitrogen, soil available nitrogen, and tree species composition. The bacterial and archaeal communities were also closely related to the bacterivore number. Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Planctomycetes, Basidiomycota, Ascomycota, and Thaumarchaeota were the main phyla that responded to environmental variation.

Conclusions

The three soil microbial groups all showed regular trends across the three different stands. The changes in the soil microbial community assembly were mainly attributed to the differences in soil nutrients, tree species composition, and feeding traits of soil nematodes.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Dr. Shi Songlin from Chengdu University of Technology for assistance in identifying the plant species.

Funding

This research was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFC0505001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Environment of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Research Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Protection, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Xiangshan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100091, China

    Jixin Cao, Hong Pan, Zhan Chen & He Shang

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  1. Jixin Cao
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  2. Hong Pan
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  3. Zhan Chen
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Correspondence to He Shang.

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All experiments comply with the current laws of China. This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Cao, J., Pan, H., Chen, Z. et al. Bacterial, fungal, and archaeal community assembly patterns and their determining factors across three subalpine stands at different stages of natural restoration after clear-cutting. J Soils Sediments 20, 2794–2803 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-020-02608-0

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