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Soil microbial community structures are shaped by agricultural systems revealing little temporal variation
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Abstract
Aim:
To determine if any differences in soil microbiome structures between both sharply contrasting,
slightly differing and quite similar agricultural systems persist through changing growth conditions.
Method:
Under field conditions, soil samples were taken from different agricultural systems; a sown
grassland to maize rotation (MC), an intensively managed permanent grassland (INT), as well as
extensively managed permanent grasslands with high (EXT_HP), low to sufficient (EXT_LP) and
deficient available P (EXT_DP), six times throughout the 2017 growing season. Soil DNA was
extracted, with the fungal internal transcribed spacer region (ITS2) and bacterial 16S rRNA gene
being PCR amplified and an amplicon-based Illumina Miseq sequence analysis conducted.
Results:
For both fungal and bacterial community structure, the influence of agricultural system (√CV =
0.256 and 0.145, respectively, both at least P < 0.01) was much greater than that of temporal
progression (√CV = 0.065 and 0.042, respectively, both P < 0.001). Importantly, nearly all
agricultural systems persistently harbored significantly distinct fungal community structures across
each of the six sampling events (all at least P < 0.05). There were not as many pairwise differences
in bacterial community structure between the agricultural systems, but some did persist (MC and
EXT_HP ~ EXT_DP, all P < 0.001).
Conclusions:
These results highlight the temporal stability of pairwise differences in soil microbiome structures
between established agricultural systems, even those with comparable management. This is a
highly relevant finding in informing the sampling strategy of studies in soil microbial ecology and for
designing efficient soil biodiversity monitoring systems.