Soil Bacterial and Fungal Community Responses to Throughfall Reduction in a Eucalyptus Plantation in Southern China

In subtropical plantations in southern China, how soil microbial communities respond to climate change-induced drought is poorly understood. A field experiment was conducted in a subtropical Eucalyptus plantation to determine the impacts of 50% of throughfall reduction (TR) on soil microbial community composition, function, and soil physicochemical properties. Results showed that TR reduced soil water content (SWC) and soil available phosphorus (AP) content. TR significantly altered 196 bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs), most of them belonging to Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Proteobacteria, while there were fewer changes in fungal OTUs. At the phylum level, TR increased the relative abundance of Acidobacteria at 0-20 cm soil depth by 37.18%, but failed to influence the relative abundance of the fungal phylum. Notably, TR did not alter the alpha diversity of the bacterial and fungal communities. The redundancy analysis showed that the bacterial communities were significantly correlated with SWC, and fungal communities were significantly correlated with AP content. According to predictions of bacterial and fungal community functions using PICRUSt2 and FUNGuild platforms, TR had different effects on both bacterial and fungal communities. Overall, SWC and AP decreased during TR, resulting in greater changes in soil bacterial community structure, but did not dramatically change soil fungal community structure.

Automated summary

The effect of 50% throughfall reduction (TR) on soil microbial communities in a subtropical Eucalyptus plantation was investigated. It was found that TR significantly altered the composition and function of bacterial communities, while showing fewer changes in fungal communities. Soil water content and available phosphorus decreased during TR, resulting in greater changes in the structure of bacterial communities.