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Soil bacterial responses to disturbance are enlarged by altitude in a mountain ecosystem

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

Purpose

Despite the deeply discussed microbial responses along the elevational gradient in natural mountain ecosystem, it remains elusive about how soil bacterial communities and their functional profiles respond to the disturbance along an elevational gradient.

Materials and methods

In this study, soil bacterial community diversity, compositions, and the potential functional profiles for the cut slopes (CS) and natural soils (NS) across three elevations (2900 m, 3102 m, and 3194 m) were studied in a mountain ecosystem. We investigated the diversity patterns of soil bacteria by sequencing 16S rRNA gene amplicons. The bacterial functional potential was predicted via using the PICRUSt2. Functional redundancy was calculated based on the copy numbers of KO (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes Orthology). The drivers for variations in bacterial communities were evaluated using Spearman’s rank correlation. The relative contributions of diversity and community composition to the community function and functional redundancy were assessed using variation partitioning analysis.

Results

The results showed that the bacterial α-diversity declined but the β-diversity increased with the elevation in both CS and NS. There were overall trends that the differences in bacterial α-diversity, β-diversity, community compositions, and community functions between CS and NS were enlarged with the elevation. The α-diversity was highly correlated with soil moisture, followed by total nitrogen; the community composition was significantly correlated with total nitrogen and ammonium nitrogen, followed by soil moisture in CS. Functional redundancy was lower in CS than that in NS. The relative contributions of bacterial α-diversity and community composition in regulating community functions were almost similar in CS. Bacterial community compositions contributed more to functional redundancy than α-diversity in both types of soil.

Conclusion

This study revealed that the elevated altitude enlarges soil bacterial responses to disturbance in CS through increasing soil moisture and reducing nitrogen availability. Our findings provide new insights for the ecological restoration of engineering wound-surface in mountain ecosystem.

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Data availability

Raw reads have been deposited into Microbiome Database (http://egcloud.cib.cn) with an accession number of PRJ-AMPLI-074e63a809e72441a04a6d770af8e5bf.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the supporter of this project and the referees for their constructive comments.

Funding

The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41971056) and the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFC0504903).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Environmental and Applied Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Environmental Microbiology Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Haijun Liao, Chaonan Li & Xiangzhen Li

  2. Key Laboratory of Bio-Resource and Eco-Environment of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610065, People’s Republic of China

    Yingwei Ai

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  1. Haijun Liao
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Liao, H., Li, C., Ai, Y. et al. Soil bacterial responses to disturbance are enlarged by altitude in a mountain ecosystem. J Soils Sediments 23, 3820–3831 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03597-6

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