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Does the Aboveground Herbivore Assemblage Influence Soil Bacterial Community Composition and Richness in Subalpine Grasslands?

  • Soil Microbiology
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Abstract

Grassland ecosystems support large communities of aboveground herbivores that are known to directly and indirectly affect belowground properties such as the microbial community composition, richness, or biomass. Even though multiple species of functionally different herbivores coexist in grassland ecosystems, most studies have only considered the impact of a single group, i.e., large ungulates (mostly domestic livestock) on microbial communities. Thus, we investigated how the exclusion of four groups of functionally different herbivores affects bacterial community composition, richness, and biomass in two vegetation types with different grazing histories. We progressively excluded large, medium, and small mammals as well as invertebrate herbivores using exclosures at 18 subalpine grassland sites (9 per vegetation type). We assessed the bacterial community composition using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) at each site and exclosure type during three consecutive growing seasons (2009–2011) for rhizosphere and mineral soil separately. In addition, we determined microbial biomass carbon (MBC), root biomass, plant carbon:nitrogen ratio, soil temperature, and soil moisture. Even though several of these variables were affected by herbivore exclusion and vegetation type, against our expectations, bacterial community composition, richness, or MBC were not. Yet, bacterial communities strongly differed between the three growing seasons as well as to some extent between our study sites. Thus, our study indicates that the spatiotemporal variability in soil microclimate has much stronger effects on the soil bacterial communities than the grazing regime or the composition of the vegetation in this high-elevation ecosystem.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank numerous interns and volunteers for their help with fence construction, data collection and laboratory work. Our special thanks go to Bigna Stoffel, Vera Baptista, Anna Schweiger, and Annatina Zingg for sorting the roots. We are grateful to the Swiss National Park for administrative support of our research. This study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, SNF grant-no 31003A_122009/1 and SNF grant-no 31003A_140939/1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swiss Federal Institute of Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Zuercherstrasse 111, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Melanie Hodel, Martin Schütz, Martijn L. Vandegehuchte, Beat Frey, Matthias Albrecht & Anita C. Risch

  2. Bureau for Agriculture and Environment State of Obwalden, Department Environment, St. Antonistrasse 4, 6060, Sarnen, Switzerland

    Melanie Hodel

  3. Agroscope, Institute for Sustainability Sciences, Reckenholzstrasse 191, 8046, Zuerich, Switzerland

    Matthias Albrecht

  4. USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, 3644 Avtech Parkway, Redding, CA, 96002, USA

    Matt D. Busse

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  1. Melanie Hodel
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  2. Martin Schütz
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  3. Martijn L. Vandegehuchte
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  4. Beat Frey
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  7. Anita C. Risch
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anita C. Risch.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 Average number of ungulate pellet groups 100 m−2, number of marmots counted, and average number of grasshoppers m−2 at each site for summer 2009 and 2010
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Table 5 Interannual differences in bacterial community richness for both the mineral soil and the rhizosphere. Interannual differences in environmental variables microbial biomass (MBC; mg/kg), soil temperature in °C; soil moisture (%), plant material C:N ratio and root biomass (g/m2); values represent mean ± standard error. F = F value, p = p value; different letters indicate significantly different values
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Hodel, M., Schütz, M., Vandegehuchte, M.L. et al. Does the Aboveground Herbivore Assemblage Influence Soil Bacterial Community Composition and Richness in Subalpine Grasslands?. Microb Ecol 68, 584–595 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-014-0435-0

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