Effects of vegetation type, season, and soil properties on soil microbial community in subtropical forests

Abstract The diversity and composition of soil microbial community in forests are affected by vegetation type, season, and soil properties, but the relative importance of these factors on the diversity and composition of microbial community is poorly understood. In this study, high-throughput sequencing was used to assess the soil prokaryote (16S rRNA) and fungal (ITS rRNA) communities of five vegetation types (evergreen broad-leaved forest [EBL], deciduous broad-leaved forest, mixed coniferous–broad-leaved forest, coniferous forest [CF], and secondary shrubland [SS]) for four seasons in a secondary subtropical forest in Eastern China. Soil physicochemical properties and plant diversity were also surveyed for each vegetation type. Vegetation type, season, and their interaction significantly affected the Shannon diversity indexes of soil prokaryotes. The Shannon index of soil fungi was affected by vegetation type. The soil prokaryote and fungal compositions of the five vegetation types were significantly different. The prokaryote compositions of EBL, CF, and SS significantly changed in four seasons, but only the fungal composition of SS changed with the seasons. Variation partition showed that vegetation type and season individually explain 25% and 29% of the variance in prokaryote composition and 19% and 1% of the variance in fungal composition, respectively. Prokaryote diversity and composition were significantly driven by soil pH and organic carbon and fungal diversity and composition were significantly driven by soil pH and electrical conductivity when controlling the effects of vegetation types and seasons.