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

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.

Keywords: Bacterial diversity; Community composition; Fungal diversity; Nitrogen deposition; Soil microorganism; Temperate steppe.