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Increased litter input significantly changed the total and active microbial communities in degraded grassland soils

  • Soils, Sec 1 • Soil Organic Matter Dynamics and Nutrient Cycling • Research Article
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Abstract

Purpose

Increasing organic matter input and phosphorus fertilization are employed extensively to restore degraded grasslands. Nevertheless, little is known about their effects on microbes, especially on active microbial populations. Therefore, this study is aimed at examining the short-term influences of litter and phosphorus addition on microbes in degraded grassland soils.

Materials and methods

A microcosm experiment was established using soils sampled from a heavily degraded Tibetan alpine meadow. The experiment used a two-way factorial design with grass litter and phosphorus addition as the main factors. Microbial abundance and rDNA transcriptional activity were assessed through quantitative PCR. Total and active microbial community profiles were measured using DNA- and RNA-based MiSeq sequencing, respectively.

Results and discussion

As shown in this study, litter addition significantly increased microbial rDNA transcriptional activity and fungal abundance, but it decreased microbial α-diversity. However, prokaryote abundance was unaffected by the litter addition. Total and active soil microbial community profiles and interaction patterns were also significantly altered by litter addition. The relative abundance of copiotrophic and oligotrophic microbial lineages significantly increased and decreased, respectively, in the soils with litter addition. Functional predictions suggested that litter addition might significantly increase the abundance of pathogens, as well as microbes related to nitrogen fixation, denitrification, and chitinolysis, while decreasing nitrifier abundance. In contrast, no significant effects of the phosphorus addition on soil microbes were observed.

Conclusions

These findings highlight the significant effects of increasing litter input on total and active soil microbial communities and suggest that microbial responses should be considered when restoring degraded grasslands by increasing organic matter input.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0501800), the Strategic Priority Research Program (A) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20050103), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31570518 and 31971530), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) program (2019QZKK0502), and the start-up funding from Yunnan University (C176220100024).

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  1. Rongxiao Che and Dong Liu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of International Rivers and Eco-security, Yunnan Key Laboratory of International Rivers and Transboundary Eco-Security, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Rongxiao Che & Jinming Hu

  2. College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Rongxiao Che, Jinling Qin, Fang Wang, Linfeng Li & Xiaoyong Cui

  3. Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, 4111, Australia

    Rongxiao Che, Fang Wang, Weijin Wang, Zhihong Xu & Linfeng Li

  4. State Key Laboratory of Natural Resource Conservation and Utilization in Yunnan and Center for Life Science, School of Life Sciences, Yunnan University, Kunming, China

    Dong Liu

  5. Graham Centre of Agricultural Innovation, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, 2650, Australia

    Iman Tahmasbian

  6. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Xiaoyong Cui

  7. Huairou Eco-Environmental Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 101408, China

    Xiaoyong Cui

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  1. Rongxiao Che
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Che, R., Liu, D., Qin, J. et al. Increased litter input significantly changed the total and active microbial communities in degraded grassland soils. J Soils Sediments 20, 2804–2816 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-020-02619-x

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