Land-Use Intensity Rather Than Plant Functional Identity Shapes Bacterial and Fungal Rhizosphere Communities

The rhizosphere encompasses the soil surrounding the surface of plants’ fine roots. Accordingly, the microbiome present is influenced by both soil type and plant species. Furthermore, soil microbial communities respond to land-use intensity due to the effects on soil conditions and plant performance. However, there is limited knowledge about the impact of grassland management practices under field conditions on the composition of both bacteria and fungi in the rhizosphere of different plant functional groups. In spring 2014 we planted four phytometer species, two forbs (Plantago lanceolata, Achillea millefolium) and two grasses (Dactylis glomerata, Arrhenatherum elatius) into 13 permanent experimental grassland plots, differing in management. After 6 months, rhizosphere and bulk soil associated with the phytometer plants were sampled, microbial genomic DNA was extracted and bacterial 16S and fungal ITS rDNA were sequenced using Illumina MiSeq. Our study revealed that the rhizosphere microbial community was more diverse than the bulk soil community. There were no differences in microbial community composition between the two plant functional groups, but a clear impact of root traits and edaphic conditions. Land-use intensity strongly affected plant productivity, neighboring plant richness and edaphic conditions, especially soil C/N ratio, which in turn had a strong influence on root traits and thereby explained to large extent microbial community composition. Rhizosphere microbes were mainly affected by abiotic factors, in particular by land-use intensity, while plant functional type had only subordinate effects. Our study provides novel insights into the assembly of rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities in response to land-use intensity and plant functional groups in managed grassland ecosystems.

Impact of poplar-based phytomanagement on soil properties and microbial communities in a metal-contaminated site

Despite a long history of use in phytomanagement strategies, the impacts of poplar trees on the structure and function of microbial communities that live in the soil remain largely unknown. The current study combined fungal and bacterial community analyses from different management regimes using Illumina-based sequencing with soil analysis. The poplar phytomanagement regimes led to a significant increase in soil fertility and a decreased bioavailability of Zn and Cd, in concert with changes in the microbial communities. The most notable changes in the relative abundance of taxa and operational taxonomic units unsurprisingly indicated that root and soil constitute distinct ecological microbial habitats, as exemplified by the dominance of Laccaria in root samples. The poplar cultivar was also an important driver, explaining 12% and 6% of the variance in the fungal and bacterial data sets, respectively. The overall dominance of saprophytic fungi, e.g. Penicillium canescens, might be related to the decomposition activities needed at the experimental site. Our data further highlighted that the mycorrhizal colonization of poplar cultivars varies greatly between the species and genotypes, which is exemplified by the dominance of Scleroderma under Vesten samples. Further interactions between fungal and bacterial functional groups stressed the potential of high-throughput sequencing technologies in uncovering the microbial ecology of disturbed environments.