Tropical forest conversion to rubber plantation affects soil micro- & mesofaunal community & diversity

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 9; no. 1; p. 5893
• Main Authors: Singh, Dharmesh, Slik, J W Ferry, Jeon, Yoon-Seong, Tomlinson, Kyle W, Yang, Xiaodong, Wang, Jin, Kerfahi, Dorsaf, Porazinska, Dorota L, Adams, Jonathan M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Nature Publishing Group 10.04.2019; Nature Publishing Group UK
• Subjects: Animals; Annelida - genetics; Annelida - physiology; Arthropods - genetics; Arthropods - physiology; Biodiversity; Carbon Sequestration; Community structure; Hevea - growth & development; Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; Land use; Nematoda - genetics; Nematoda - physiology; Phylogeny; Plantations; Rainforest; Rainforests; RNA, Ribosomal, 18S - genetics; rRNA 18S; Rubber; Soil - chemistry; Soil Microbiology; Soil pH; Stochastic Processes; Stochasticity; Tropical forests
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-42333-4

Tropical rainforests play important roles in carbon sequestration and are hot spots for biodiversity. Tropical forests are being replaced by rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) plantations, causing widespread concern of a crash in biodiversity. Such changes in aboveground vegetation might have stronger impacts on belowground biodiversity. We studied tropical rainforest fragments and derived rubber plantations at a network of sites in Xishuangbanna, China, hypothesizing a major decrease in diversity with conversion to plantations. We used metabarcoding of the 18S rRNA gene and recovered 2313 OTUs, with a total of 449 OTUs shared between the two land-use types. The most abundant phyla detected were Annelida (66.4% reads) followed by arthropods (15.5% reads) and nematodes (8.9% reads). Of these, only annelids were significantly more abundant in rubber plantation. Taken together, α- and β-diversity were significantly higher in forest than rubber plantation. Soil pH and spatial distance explained a significant portion of the variability in phylogenetic community structure for both land-use types. Community assembly was primarily influenced by stochastic processes. Overall it appears that forest replacement by rubber plantation results in an overall loss and extensive replacement of soil micro- and mesofaunal biodiversity, which should be regarded as an additional aspect of the impact of forest conversion.