The Bacterial Composition and Diversity in a Eucalyptus pellita Plantation in South Sumatra, Indonesia

Abstract

Plantation forests have been strongly established in Indonesia, with Acacias and Eucalyptus as the most common species. Using a single species in a large plantation may affect its sustainability because of the threat from biotic and abiotic factors. The soil microbiome is key to an ecological process strongly associated with both biotic and abiotic factors. However, research aiming to understand soil microbial communities in plantation forests in Indonesia is still limited. We analyzed the soil bacterial communities from six sites of plantation forests and three sites of conservation areas representing natural forest ecosystems. We produced approximately 140,136 reads from nine soil samples and generated 2385 total OTUs from the reads. The ten most abundant phyla were Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Verrucomicrobia, Nitro-spirae, Gemmatimonadetes, and Planctomycetes. At the phylum level, the relative abundance of microbes in E. pellita plantation forests and natural forests was similar, except for Bacteroidetes. The richness and diversity of the microbiomes were slightly lower in the plantation forests than in the natural forests. Minor variations in the soil’s chemical properties may be responsible for the variations in the microbiome between natural and plantation forests. According to RDA, the K, total N, and organic C were positively correlated with the bacterial diversity, while the pH was negatively correlated. There was a positive correlation between the abundance of Bacteroidetes and the K content. However, there is not much information regarding this relationship.