The conversion of natural habitats into farmland has been a leading cause of species loss worldwide. Here, we investigated to what extent less intensive soil disturbance can mitigate this loss. Specifically, we examined whether reduced soil disturbance by tillage in agricultural fields could contribute to soil microbial biodiversity by providing a habitat for species that are limited by conventional tillage. To do so, we studied the diversity of soil biotas from three agricultural practices representing conventional tillage, reduced tillage and no tillage. Study fields were sampled by taking a bulk soil sample at the centre and edge of each field. The soil communities were recorded with environmental DNA metabarcoding using three molecular markers targeting bacteria, fungi and eukaryotes. While these three markers represent the vast majority of biotic variation in the soil, they will inevitably be dominated by the megadiverse microbiota of bacteria, microfungi and protists. We found a significant differentiation in community composition related to the intensity of tillage. Richness was weakly correlated to tillage, and more influenced by whether the sample was taken in the center or the edge of the field. Despite the significant effect of tillage on composition, comparisons with natural ecosystems revealed that all 30 study fields were much more similar in composition to other rotational fields than to more natural habitats, oldfields and leys. Despite a slightly higher similarity to oldfields and semi-natural grasslands, the contribution of no-till soil communities to biodiversity conservation is negligible, and our results indicate that restoration on set aside land may contribute more to conservation.

中文翻译：

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少耕对土壤微生物群的生物多样性影响。

自然栖息地转变为农田一直是全球物种消失的主要原因。在这里，我们研究了较少强度的土壤扰动可以在多大程度上减轻这种损失。具体来说，我们研究了农田耕作减少土壤扰动是否可以通过为受常规耕作限制的物种提供栖息地来促进土壤微生物多样性。为此，我们研究了传统耕作、少耕和免耕三种农业实践中土壤生物群的多样性。通过在每块田地的中心和边缘采集大量土壤样本来对研究田地进行采样。使用针对细菌、真菌和真核生物的三种分子标记，通过环境 DNA 元条形码记录土壤群落。虽然这三个标记代表了土壤中绝大多数生物变异，但它们将不可避免地受到细菌、微真菌和原生生物等巨型多样性微生物群的主导。我们发现与耕作强度相关的群落组成存在显着差异。丰富度与耕作的相关性较弱，并且更多地受到样本是在田地中心还是边缘采集的影响。尽管耕作对组成有显着影响，但与自然生态系统的比较表明，所有 30 个研究田地的组成与其他轮作田的组成比与更多自然栖息地、老田和地粒的组成更为相似。尽管免耕土壤群落与旧地和半天然草地的相似性稍高，但其对生物多样性保护的贡献可以忽略不计，我们的结果表明，预留土地上的恢复可能对保护做出更大贡献。