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Soil Functional Diversity Analysis of a Bauxite-Mined Restoration Chronosequence

  • Soil Microbiology
  • Published:
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Abstract

Soil microorganisms are sensitive to environmental perturbations such that changes in microbial community structure and function can provide early signs of anthropogenic disturbances and even predict restoration success. We evaluated the bacterial functional diversity of un-mined and three chronosequence sites at various stages of rehabilitation (0, 10, and 20 years old) located in the Mocho Mountains of Jamaica. Samples were collected during the dry and wet seasons and analyzed for metal concentrations, microbial biomass carbon, bacterial numbers, and functional responses of soil microbiota using community-level physiological profile (CLPP) assays. Regardless of the season, un-mined soils consisted of higher microbial biomass and numbers than any of the rehabilitated sites. Additionally, the number and rate of substrates utilized and substrate evenness (the distribution of color development between the substrates) were significantly greater in the un-mined soils with carbohydrates being preferentially utilized than amino acids, polymers, carboxylic acids, and esters. To some extent, functional responses varied with the seasons but the least physiological activity was shown by the site rehabilitated in 1987 indicating long-term perturbation to this ecosystem. Small subunit ribosomal DNA (SSUrDNA)-denaturing gradient-gel electrophoresis analyses on the microbiota collected from the most preferred CLPP substrates followed by taxonomic analyses showed Proteobacteria, specifically the gamma-proteobacteria, as the most functionally active phyla, indicating a propensity of this phyla to out-compete other groups under the prevailing conditions. Additionally, multivariate statistical analyses, Shannon's diversity, and evenness indices, principal component analysis, biplot and un-weighted-pair-group method with arithmetic averages dendrograms further confirmed that un-mined sites were distinctly different from the rehabilitated soils.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for this work was provided by Jamalco/Alcoa Inc. We are also grateful to John Gardner and Hopeton Ferguson for their continued help and the Jamalco staff for providing help during sample collection. We would also like to acknowledge Maverick and Benjamin LeBlanc for their assistance in soil characterization and Sydia Williams for GIS maps of the sample locations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Sciences Institute, Florida A&M University, 1515, S. MLK Blvd., 305 FSHSRC, Tallahassee, FL, 32307, USA

    Dawn E. Lewis, Denis Wafula, Rana Athar, Tamar Dickerson, Henry N. Williams & Ashvini Chauhan

  2. Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Wetland and Aquatic Biogeochemistry Laboratory, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    John R. White

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  1. Dawn E. Lewis
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  2. John R. White
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  7. Ashvini Chauhan
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Correspondence to Ashvini Chauhan.

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Supplementary Figure 1

Percentage composition of phylogenetic groups that were found to be metabolically active in the Mocho Mountain area of Jamaica (DOC 27 kb)

Supplementary Figure 2

Phylogenetic tree of partial 16S rRNA gene sequences from domain Bacteria, identified from the predominantly utilized substrates in the CLPP assay on the un-mined and rehabilitated soils. The phylotree was constructed by the neighbor-joining method using MEGA4 software. Halobacterium salinarum was used as an outgroup (DOC 62 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

Soil microbiota identified from the most preferred BIOLOG® substrates in the CLPP assay (DOC 98 kb)

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Lewis, D.E., White, J.R., Wafula, D. et al. Soil Functional Diversity Analysis of a Bauxite-Mined Restoration Chronosequence. Microb Ecol 59, 710–723 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-009-9621-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-009-9621-x

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