Abstract:

Soil microbes play an essential role in forest ecosystems. The development of the high-throughput sequencing method provides an invaluable opportunity to further understand soil microbial communities. In this study, we investigated soil bacterial diversity in the Baotianman forest using the Illumina Miseq platform. Results showed that in the 31 soil sampling points, the number of bacterial taxa detected at different classification levels increased with increasing number of sampling points. When all 31 samples were considered, the number of relative bacterial groups included 45 phyla, 163 classes, 319 orders, 495 families, 785 genera and 42,632 OTUs. The mean values of relative bacterial taxa in the 31 samples were 34.2 phyla, 114.7 classes, 215.2 orders, 323.7 families, 446.6 genera, and 5,924.7 OTUs. At the classification level of phylum, class and order, the dominant groups were Proteobacteria (38.30%), α-Proteobacteria (18.08%), and Rhizobiales (10.62%), respectively. These preliminary findings suggest that Baotianman forest soils have high levels of bacterial diversity to some degree and provide basic information and knowledge to further understand the relationship between soil bacterial diversity and plant diversity and other related scientific questions.

Key words: forest, soil microbe, bacterial diversity, high-throughput sequencing, Proteobacteria, α-Proteobacteria, Rhizobiales, Baotianman National Nature Reserve