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

  • Pin LiEmail author
  • Congcong Shen
  • Lai Jiang
  • Zhaozhong Feng
  • Jingyun Fang
Original Paper
First Online:

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.

Keywords

Nitrogen and phosphorus addition Soil bacterial community Tropic Primary and secondary forest Pyrosequencing 
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Notes

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 information

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

Supplementary material

374_2019_1349_MOESM1_ESM.docx (365 kb)
ESM 1 (DOCX 364 kb)

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental SciencesChinese Academy of SciencesBeijingChina
  2. 2.College of Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijingChina
  3. 3.Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of EducationPeking UniversityBeijingChina
  4. 4.Collaborative Innovation Center of Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology, School of Environmental Science and EngineeringNanjing University of Information Science & TechnologyNanjingChina

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