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Long-term nickel exposure altered the bacterial community composition but not diversity in two contrasting agricultural soils

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Abstract

Nickel pollution imposes deleterious effects on soil ecosystem. The responses of soil microorganisms to long-term nickel pollution under field conditions remain largely unknown. Here, we used high-throughput sequencing to elucidate the impacts of long-term nickel pollution on soil bacterial communities in two contrasting agricultural soils. Our results found that the soil microbial biomass carbon consistently decreased along the nickel gradients in both soils. Nickel pollution selectively favored or impeded the prevalence of several dominant bacterial guilds, in particular, Actinobacteria showed tolerance, while Acidobacteria and Planctomycetes displayed sensitivity. Despite the apparent shifts in the bacterial community composition, no clear tendency in the bacterial diversity and abundance was identified along the nickel gradients in either soil. Collectively, we provide evidence that long-term nickel pollution shifted the soil bacterial communities, resulting in the decrease of microbial biomass although the bacterial diversity was not significantly changed.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by National Science Foundation of China (51221892 and 41201523).We gratefully acknowledge Li-Mei Zhang and Miao-Miao Zhang for their assistance during the field sampling.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China

    Jing Li, Jun-Tao Wang, Yu-Rong Liu & Ji-Zheng He

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jing Li & Jun-Tao Wang

  3. National Soil Fertility and Fertilizer Effects Long-term Monitoring Network, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

    Yi-Bing Ma

  4. Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Hang-Wei Hu & Ji-Zheng He

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  1. Jing Li
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  2. Hang-Wei Hu
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Correspondence to Ji-Zheng He.

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Responsible editor: Zhihong Xu

Capsule: Nickel pollution altered soil bacterial community composition but not diversity.

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Li, J., Hu, HW., Ma, YB. et al. Long-term nickel exposure altered the bacterial community composition but not diversity in two contrasting agricultural soils. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 10496–10505 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4232-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4232-1

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