The diversity of soil mesofauna declines after bamboo invasion in subtropical China

Qiaoyu Wei; Rui Yin; Junhao Huang; Alfried P Vogler; Yongchun Li; Xiaoqian Miao; Paul Kardol

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147982

The diversity of soil mesofauna declines after bamboo invasion in subtropical China

Sci Total Environ. 2021 Oct 1:789:147982. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147982. Epub 2021 May 24.

Authors

Qiaoyu Wei¹, Rui Yin², Junhao Huang³, Alfried P Vogler⁴, Yongchun Li⁵, Xiaoqian Miao¹, Paul Kardol⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Forestry Protection, School of Forestry and Biotechnology, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 311300, China.
² Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Department of Community Ecology, Theodor-Lieser-Strasse 4, 06110 Halle (Saale), Germany; Institute of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
³ Department of Forestry Protection, School of Forestry and Biotechnology, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 311300, China. Electronic address: huangjh@zafu.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK.; Department of Life Sciences, Silwood Park Campus, Imperial College London, Ascot, UK.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Silviculture, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China.
⁶ Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 901-83 Umeå, Sweden.

PMID: 34052488
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147982

Abstract

Plant invasions often act as ecosystem 'simplifiers' to simplify diversity and community structure of soil biota. However, inconsistent relationships between plant invasion and soil fauna have been found and few studies have addressed how soil fauna communities change upon plant invasions across taxa and feeding guilds. Here, we investigated the effects of moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) invasion in subtropical China on soil mesofauna communities using novel high-throughput sequencing (HTS). Specifically, we analyzed the spatio-temporal dynamics of fauna diversity and feeding guilds in the litter and soil layers for three stages of moso bamboo invasion, i.e., uninvaded (secondary broadleaved forest), moderately invaded (mixed bamboo forest) and completely invaded (P. edulis forest). Overall, we found that the completely invaded bamboo forest decreased species richness and diversity of total fauna, herbivores, and microbivores consistently across different soil layers, but less so detritivores and predators. Although we did not find any interaction effects of bamboo invasion and soil layers on soil fauna diversity indices, significant interaction effects were found on the community composition, for total fauna and their feeding guilds. Specifically, the detrimental effects of bamboo invasion on the trophic structure of soil fauna communities were more profound in the litter layer than in the soil layer, suggesting that a litter layer with more diverse taxa does not mean higher resistance to plant invasion in maintaining the soil food web structure. Taken together, our findings suggest that different responses within fauna feeding guilds to plant invasion were pervasive, and a deeper soil layer may better alleviate the negative effects of pant invasion on fauna community structure. These shifts in soil biodiversity may further degrade ecosystem functioning.

Keywords: Ecosystem function; High-throughput sequencing; Metabarcoding; Plant invasion; Soil fauna; Trophic structure.

MeSH terms

China
Ecosystem*
Forests
Soil Microbiology
Soil*

Substances

Soil