Response of Soil Bacterial Community Structure to Land-use Conversion of Natural Forests in Maoershan National Forest Park, China

To compare and evaluate the soil bacterial community composition in Maoershan National Forest Park, we analyzed soil samples from four replicated land-use types (hardwood forests, cultivated lands, settlement and slash lands) using a denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) method based on 16s rRNA gene fragments. Forty-two DGGE bands were successfully excised for sequencing. Our results revealed that the conversion of natural forest to other land-use types had a significant effect on the soil bacterial community. Bacteroidetes  was absent in forest soils. Beta-Proteobacteria  was unique to settlement soils, whereas Cyanobacteria  and  Verrucomicrobia  were absent in agricultural soils. Additionally,  Acidobacteria  and Proteobacteria  (α, β, γ, δ classes) were the dominant bacterial communities in all soils. Thus, conversion of the forest land into other land-use types resulted in changes in the bacterial communities which might affect the productivity of the soil ecosystem. Together these results suggested that the utility of using sequence-based approaches to analyze bacterial communities provides detailed information on individual bacterial community composition and permit the robust assessment of the biogeographical patterns.