PAPER: Land use history impact on soil bacteria

From pine to pasture: land use history has long-term impacts on soil bacterial community composition and functional potential

March 2020

Hermans SM, Taylor M, Grelet G, Curran-Cournane F, Buckley HL, Handley KM, Lear G 2020. From pine to pasture: land use history has long-term impacts on soil bacterial community composition and functional potential. FEMS Microbiol Ecol 96(4).

ABSTRACT

Bacterial communities are crucial to soil ecosystems and are known to be sensitive to environmental changes. However, our understanding of how present-day soil bacterial communities remain impacted by historic land uses is limited; implications for their functional potential are especially understudied. Through 16S rRNA gene amplicon and shotgun metagenomic sequencing, we characterized the structure and functional potential of soil bacterial communities after land use conversion.

KEYWORDS

bacterial communities; metagenomics; land use; pine forest; dairy; pasture; functional diversity nitrogen cycle