Research Advances in Aboveground and Belowground Biodiversity Linkages

Release Time:2015-11-27 Big Small

On different stages of forest succession, the above- ground and below-ground biodiversity linkages are differ according to the work in our institute. Passed work was confined in alpha diversity for rhyizosphere microorganisms and related individual tree species but lack of data on the community level and for beta diversity.
Research Groups of Soil Chemistry and of Natural Forest Ecology in our institute took representative forest types in early and late successional stages on Changbai Mountain as subjests, set many sampling quadrats, collected data both above-ground vegetation and below-ground soil microbial communities, systematically studied the ecological linkage between biodiversities of above- and below-ground bio-communities. The results show that the linkage is clearly different in early and late successional stages.
For alpha-diversity, there is no significant linkage and for late stage, the linkage is negative.
This is contradictory to the hypothesis that the high (or low) biodiversity in above-ground vegetation is linked to the corresponding below-ground high (or low) diversity. For beta-diversity, no above and below ground linkage in early successional stage, but positive linkage shows in late stage. The results were published in Scientific Reports on July 2015 (IF=5.578).
Forest types select different Soil bacterial communities. Generally, it was suggested that in temperate forests, various forest type have different below-ground microbial community, but the influences of forest type on the soil bacterial community and related mechanisms were not clear. Recent research on Changbai Mountain showed that soil in Brad-leaved-Korean Pine Forest and its secondary forest ( Poplar and Birch Forest) had higher total nutrient content (TOC total nitrogen, total phosphorys) and pH value. The soil under Sprus-Fir forest and Larch forest had higher C/N ratio. The soil under two forest types of Coniferous-Deciduous mixed foresthad higher soil bacterial alpha diversityand the bacterial composition was apparently differ from coniferous forests. The dominant groups were Asidobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, Bacteroidetes and Chloroflexi, The soil bacterial community in two coniferous forest types was dominated by nutrient-rich flora such as Protebacteria and Gematimonadetes.