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Soil Acidification Under Long-Term N Addition Decreases the Diversity of Soil Bacteria and Fungi and Changes Their Community Composition in a Semiarid Grassland

  • Soil Microbiology
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Abstract

Soil microorganisms play key roles in terrestrial biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem functions. However, few studies address how long-term nitrogen (N) addition gradients impact soil bacterial and fungal diversity and community composition simultaneously. Here, we investigated soil bacterial and fungal diversity and community composition based on a long-term (17 years) N addition gradient experiment (six levels: 0, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 gN m−2 year−1) in temperate grassland, using the high-throughput Illumina MiSeq sequencing. Results showed that both soil bacterial and fungal alpha diversity responded nonlinearly to the N input gradient and reduced drastically when the N addition rate reached 32 g N m−2 year−1. The relative abundance of soil bacterial phyla Proteobacteria increased and Acidobacteria decreased significantly with increasing N level. In addition, the relative abundance of bacterial functional groups associated with aerobic ammonia oxidation, aerobic nitrite oxidation, nitrification, respiration of sulfate and sulfur compounds, and chitinolysis significantly decreased under the highest N addition treatment. For soil fungi, the relative abundance of Ascomycota increased linearly along the N enrichment gradient. These results suggest that changes in soil microbial community composition under elevated N do not always support the copiotrophic-oligotrophic hypothesis, and some certain functional bacteria would not simply be controlled by soil nutrients. Further analysis illustrated that reduced soil pH under N addition was the main factor driving variations in soil microbial diversity and community structure in this grassland. Our findings highlight the consistently nonlinear responses of soil bacterial and fungal diversity to increasing N input and the significant effects of soil acidification on soil microbial communities, which can be helpful for the prediction of underground ecosystem processes in light of future rising N deposition.

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Data Availability

All obtained sequences have been deposited in the SRA of NCBI database under the bioproject numbers PRJNA777017.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the staff of Duolun Restoration Ecology Experimentation and Demonstration Station for their assistance in field sampling.

Funding

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31800403, 41977009, 41977039) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2020QD115).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Ludong University, Yantai, 264025, China

    Bing Song & Ying Zhao

  2. Bei**g Key Laboratory of Wetland Services and Restoration, Institute of Wetland Research, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Bei**g, 100091, China

    Yong Li

  3. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, 100093, China

    Liuyi Yang, Huiqiu Shi, Linghao Li & Wenming Bai

Authors
  1. Bing Song
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  2. Yong Li
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  4. Huiqiu Shi
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  5. Linghao Li
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  6. Wenming Bai
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  7. Ying Zhao
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Bing Song, Liuyi Yang, and Huiqiu Shi. The experiment was conceived and designed by Linghao Li and Wenming Bai. Data analysis was performed by Bing Song and Yong Li. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Bing Song and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Bing Song.

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Song, B., Li, Y., Yang, L. et al. Soil Acidification Under Long-Term N Addition Decreases the Diversity of Soil Bacteria and Fungi and Changes Their Community Composition in a Semiarid Grassland. Microb Ecol 85, 221–231 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-021-01954-x

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