The leguminous Hedysarum shrubs effectively drive the diversity and structural composition of soil bacterial community through rhizocompartments in the process of desertification reversal

Abstract

In this study, we aimed to assess the impact of vegetation restoration measures on the soil microbial community in degraded land via assessing the structural changes and diversity of soil bacterial communities and their response to environmental variables in the rhizocompartments (i.e., intershrub bulk soil, rhizosphere soil, and roots) of two legumes (Hedysarum scoparium and Hedysarum mongolicum) in Mu Us Desert, China. The bacterial diversity and soil physicochemical characteristics were studied using high‐throughput 16S rRNA genome sequencing and traditional soil physicochemical indices, respectively. The rhizocompartment types and plant species jointly affected the alpha and beta diversities of bacterial communities in the rhizosphere and non‐rhizosphere soil; however, rhizocompartments played a dominant role (P < 0.05). Compared with the network of root endophytes, the bacterial network in the rhizosphere soil exhibited increased total nodes, total links, harmonic geodesic distance, and modularity indices, and the structure was more complex. The root endophytic community was primarily impacted by soil nutrients (particularly nitrogen and soil organic carbon), whereas bacterial communities of bacteria in the nonrhizosphere and rhizosphere soil were significantly impacted by ammonium nitrogen and soil pH because of the response of the core bacterial taxa to soil physicochemical properties. These findings revealed that plant restoration techniques drive desertification reversal via altering the composition and diversity of soil bacterial communities. This study provided new insights regarding the ecological restoration of degraded lands in deserts.

Desertification Reversal Promotes the Complexity of Plant Community by Increasing Plant Species Diversity of Each Plant Functional Type

“…Shrubs promote biological soil crusts and have a positive impact on soil quality [14]. Plants can also improve soil properties and promote soil bacterial diversity by changing the soil microbial community structure [15,16]. Another study showed that plant cover in desert ecosystems can be significantly affected by environmental factors like soil nutrients [17].…”