title: Contributions of understory and/or overstory vegetations to soil microbial PLFA and nematode diversities in Eucalyptus monocultures.
abstract: Ecological interactions between aboveground and belowground biodiversity have received many attentions in the recent decades. Although soil biodiversity declined with the decrease of plant diversity, many previous studies found plant species identities were more important than plant diversity in controlling soil biodiversity. This study focused on the responses of soil biodiversity to the altering of plant functional groups, namely overstory and understory vegetations, rather than plant diversity gradient. We conducted an experiment by removing overstory and/or understory vegetation to compare their effects on soil microbial phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) and nematode diversities in eucalyptus monocultures. Our results indicated that both overstory and understory vegetations could affect soil microbial PLFA and nematode diversities, which manifested as the decrease in Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H') and Pielou evenness index (J) and the increase in Simpson dominance index (λ) after vegetation removal. Soil microclimate change explained part of variance of soil biodiversity indices. Both overstory and understory vegetations positively correlated with soil microbial PLFA and nematode diversities. In addition, the alteration of soil biodiversity might be due to a mixing effect of bottom-up control and soil microclimate change after vegetation removal in the studied plantations. Given the studied ecosystem is common in humid subtropical and tropical region of the world, our findings might have great potential to extrapolate to large scales and could be conducive to ecosystem management and service.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China ; Key Laboratory of Agro-Ecological Processes in Subtropical Region, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Songze
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, Key Laboratory of Plant Stress Biology, College of Life Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng, China.
authors.forename: Chenlu
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Zhanfeng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Lixia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Shenglei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D017753:Ecosystem; D005052:Eucalyptus; D005227:Fatty Acids; D064307:Microbiota; D009348:Nematoda; D010743:Phospholipids; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry / Q000469:parasitology*; D012988:Soil Microbiology
chemical_list: D005227:Fatty Acids; D010743:Phospholipids; D012987:Soil