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Difference in soil bacterial community composition depends on forest type rather than nitrogen and phosphorus additions in tropical montane rainforests

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Abstract

Rapid increase of nitrogen (N) deposition could alter nutrient availability, leading to changes in soil microbial processes and ecosystem carbon and nutrient cycling. However, the effects of N deposition on soil microbes remain elusive in the tropical rainforests in Asia. Here, we conducted a 3-year N addition experiment with four treatments (0, 20, 50, and 100 kg N ha−1 year−1) in a primary and secondary tropical montane forest in Hainan Island, China, to explore the effects of elevated N availability on soil microbial community composition. We also conducted a phosphorus (P) treatment (50 kg P ha−1 year−1) and a N + P treatment (50 kg N ha−1 year−1 + 50 kg P ha−1 year−1) to examine potential P limitation driven by N deposition in highly weathered tropical soils, using a bar-coded pyrosequencing technique. The composition of soil bacterial communities differed dramatically between the primary and secondary forests, but not significant dissimilarity among the fertilization treatments. The community composition, phylogenetic diversity and phylotype richness were significantly correlated with soil pH, total organic C (TOC), and total N (TN), respectively. There were significant differences between the primary and secondary forest in pH, TOC, and TN, but not among the fertilization treatments. These results suggest that differences in soil nutrient status between the primary and secondary forests due to different successional stages rather than chronic N fertilization may be the major factor affecting soil bacterial composition in the tropical montane rainforests.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Haiyan Chu for kindly allowing us to use the lab equipment, Dr. Yu Shi and Mr. Huaibo Sun for kindly providing us with experimental guidance. Thanks are also due to Dr. Xiaoting Xu and Dr. Haihua Shen for the assistance of sampling and analysis. We thank Alex Boon, PhD, from Liwen Bianji, Edanz Editing China (www.liwenbianji.cn/ac), for editing the English text of a draft of this manuscript.

Funding

This study was financially supported by National Key Research and Development Program (2017YFC0503900).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shuangqing Road 18, Haidian District, Beijing, 100085, China

    Pin Li, Congcong Shen & Zhaozhong Feng

  2. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Pin Li, Congcong Shen & Zhaozhong Feng

  3. Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Pin Li, Lai Jiang & Jingyun Fang

  4. Collaborative Innovation Center of Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Zhaozhong Feng

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  1. Pin Li
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Li, P., Shen, C., Jiang, L. et al. Difference in soil bacterial community composition depends on forest type rather than nitrogen and phosphorus additions in tropical montane rainforests. Biol Fertil Soils 55, 313–323 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-019-01349-8

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