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Research article2010Peer reviewed

Differential responses of bacterial and archaeal groups at high taxonomical ranks to soil management

Wessén, Ella; Hallin, Sara Gates; Philippot, Laurent

Abstract

Little is known about abundances of the major bacterial taxa in agricultural soils and how they are affected by fertilization or other agricultural practices. Our aim was to determine the abundance and relative distribution of several bacterial phyla and one class, as well as the archaeal and crenarchaeal communities, and how they were affected by different fertilization regimes to examine whether specific responses of microorganisms could be identified at these high taxonomic ranks. We used real-time PCR with taxa specific primers to quantify the abundance of the Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, Bacteriodetes, Firmicutes, Gemmatimonadetes, Verrucomicrobia, Alphaproteobacteria and Crenarchaeota, as well as of the total bacteria and total archaea in soil sampled in 2002 and 2007 from a long term experimental field site subjected to six different fertilization regimes since 1956. The fertilization had affected soil pH, carbon and nitrogen, in addition to the C:N ratio. The total abundances of each taxon were affected in similar ways by the imposed treatments. By contrast, the relative abundance of certain taxa responded differently to the same fertilizer, with some taxa increasing while others decreased. Significant treatment effects were observed for the relative abundance of Alphaproteobacteria, Firmicutes, Verrucomicrobia and the Crenarchaeota and soil pH was the main driver for the observed differences. Differences between sampling years were also observed for the relative abundance of the Actinobacteria and the Bacteroidetes. Altogether, our results showed that agricultural practices can impact bacterial and archaeal phyla and classes in soil differently, which is consistent with recent work suggesting ecological coherence of members of bacterial clades at high taxonomic ranks. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

16S rRNA; qPCR; Phylum; Soil; Fertilization

Published in

Soil Biology and Biochemistry
2010, Volume: 42, number: 10, pages: 1759-1765
Publisher: PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

      SLU Authors

      • UKÄ Subject classification

      Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
      Agricultural Science

      Publication identifier

      DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2010.06.013

      Permanent link to this page (URI)

      https://res.slu.se/id/publ/59764