title: Aboveground-belowground biodiversity linkages differ in early and late successional temperate forests.
abstract: Understanding ecological linkages between above- and below-ground biota is critical for deepening our knowledge on the maintenance and stability of ecosystem processes. Nevertheless, direct comparisons of plant-microbe diversity at the community level remain scarce due to the knowledge gap between microbial ecology and plant ecology. We compared the α- and β- diversities of plant and soil bacterial communities in two temperate forests that represented early and late successional stages. We documented different patterns of aboveground-belowground diversity relationships in these forests. We observed no linkage between plant and bacterial α-diversity in the early successional forest, and even a negative correlation in the late successional forest, indicating that high bacterial α-diversity is not always linked to high plant α-diversity. Beta-diversity coupling was only found at the late successional stage, while in the early successional forest, the bacterial β-diversity was closely correlated with soil property distances. Additionally, we showed that the dominant competitive tree species in the late successional forest may play key roles in driving forest succession by shaping the soil bacterial community in the early successional stage. This study sheds new light on the potential aboveground-belowground linkage in natural ecosystems, which may help us understand the mechanisms that drive ecosystem succession.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110164, China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110164, China.
authors.forename: Xugao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110164, China [2] Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706, USA.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110164, China.
authors.forename: Zhanqing
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110164, China.
authors.forename: Lisha
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Computational Biology and Medical Ecology Lab, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China.
authors.forename: Sam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110164, China.
authors.forename: Xiaobin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110164, China.
authors.forename: Shan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110164, China.
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110164, China.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D017753:Ecosystem; D065928:Forests; D010944:Plants; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D012988:Soil Microbiology; D014197:Trees
chemical_list: D012987:Soil