Bacteria are more sensitive than fungi to moisture in eroded soil by natural grass vegetation restoration on the Loess Plateau

Panpan Jiao; Zhongwu Li; Lei Yang; Jijun He; Xiaofeng Chang; Haibing Xiao; Xiaodong Nie; Di Tong

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143899

Bacteria are more sensitive than fungi to moisture in eroded soil by natural grass vegetation restoration on the Loess Plateau

Sci Total Environ. 2021 Feb 20:756:143899. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143899. Epub 2020 Dec 2.

Authors

Panpan Jiao¹, Zhongwu Li², Lei Yang³, Jijun He⁴, Xiaofeng Chang⁵, Haibing Xiao⁶, Xiaodong Nie⁷, Di Tong⁸

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation CAS and MWR, Yangling 712100, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100000, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation CAS and MWR, Yangling 712100, China; College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China; College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China. Electronic address: lizw@hnu.edu.cn.
³ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100000, China; Key Laboratory of Soil Environment and Pollution Remediation, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China.
⁴ Base of the State Laboratory of Urban Environmental Processes and Digital Modeling, Key Laboratory of 3D Information Acquisition and Application, Ministry of Education, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China. Electronic address: hejiun_200018@163.com.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation CAS and MWR, Yangling 712100, China.
⁶ College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
⁷ College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China.
⁸ College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China.

PMID: 33310219
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143899

Abstract

Community composition and respiration rates of bacterial and fungal communities from grass-covered eroded soils of the Loess Plateau responded differently to constant and increasing soil moisture (SM) regimes. The soils were incubated with SM contents of 5%, 30%, and 45% and with wetting processes in the SM ranges from 5% to 30% (5-30%), from 5% to 30% to 45% (5-30-45%) and from 30% to 45% (30-45%); high-throughput sequencing and co-occurrence network analyses were applied to investigate the different responses of the bacterial and fungal communities to changed SM. Our results showed that bacteria were more sensitive than fungi to changes in SM. The dominant bacterial communities converted from Actinobacterial to Proteobacteria and Acidobacteria in 5-30-45% wetting procedure. Firmicutes preferred wet condition and exhibited slow resilience. However, no difference was observed for the Chloroflexi communities across any sample. The obvious difference in fungal composition was found between the wetting process of 5-30-45% and constant 45% SM. During the 5-30-45% procedure, the respiration rate was higher than that at 30-45% procedure after incubation for 24 days. The respiration rate in 5-30% procedure was lower than that of 5-30-45% process after incubation for 16-27 days. The larger effects on bacterial response than on fungi were verified in network analysis. Multiple stepwise regression analysis showed that 84.40% of the variation in bacterial richness and diversity as well as fungal diversity can be explained by changes in soil respiration rate in response to wetting procedure. Understanding the response of difference between bacterial and fungal community composition, phylum-levels networks and respiration rate to changes in SM is essential for the management of plant-soil-water relationship in the ecosystem after natural vegetation restoration on the Loess Plateau.

Keywords: Co-occurrence network; Loess Plateau; Microbial community; Nature grass revegetation; Respiration rate; Soil moisture.

MeSH terms

Bacteria
Carbon
Ecosystem*
Fungi
Poaceae
Soil Microbiology
Soil*

Substances

Soil
Carbon