Background: The bacterial community of forest soils is influenced by environmental disturbance and/or meteorological temperature and precipitation. In this study, we investigated three bacterial communities in soils of a natural hardwood forest and two plantations of conifer, Calocedrus formosana and Cryptomeria japonica, in a perhumid, low mountain area. By comparison with our previous studies with similar temperature and/or precipitation, we aimed to elucidate how disturbance influences the bacterial community in forest soils and whether bacterial communities in similar forest types differ under different climate conditions. Results: Analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA gene clone libraries revealed that Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria were the most abundant phyla in the three forest soil communities, with similar relative abundance of various bacterial groups. However, UniFrac analysis based on phylogenetic information revealed differences of bacterial communities between natural hardwood forest and coniferous plantation soils. The diversities of bacterial communities of the replanted Calocedrus and Cryptomeria forests were higher than that in natural hardwood forest. The bacterial diversity of these three forest soil were all higher than those in the same forest types at other locations with less precipitation or with lower temperature. In addition, the distribution of some of the most abundant operational taxonomic units in the three communities differed from other forest soils, including those related to Acidobacteria, α-, β- and γ-Proteobacteria. Conclusions: Reforestation could increase the bacterial diversity. Therefore, soil bacterial communities could be shaped by the forestry management practices and climate differences in warm and humid conditions.

Mangrove forests are one of the important ecosystems in tropical coasts because of their high primary production, which they sustain by sequestering a substantial amount of CO₂ into plant biomass. These forests often experience various levels of inundation and play an important role in CH₄ emissions, but the taxonomy of methanotrophs in these systems remains poorly understood. In this study, DNA-based stable isotope probing showed significant niche differentiation in active aerobic methanotrophs in response to niche differentiation in upstream and downstream mangrove soils of the Tamsui estuary in northwestern Taiwan, in which salinity levels differ between winter and summer. Methylobacter and Methylomicrobium-like Type I methanotrophs dominated methane-oxidizing communities in the field conditions and were significantly ¹³C-labeled in both upstream and downstream sites, while Methylobacter were well adapted to high salinity and low temperature. The Type II methanotroph Methylocystis comprised only 10–15% of all the methane oxidizers in the upstream site but less than 5% at the downstream site under field conditions. ¹³C-DNA levels in Methylocystis were significantly lower than those in Type I methanotrophs, while phylogenetic analysis further revealed the presence of novel methane oxidizers that are phylogenetically distantly related to Type Ia in fresh and incubated soils at a downstream site. These results suggest that Type I methanotrophs display niche differentiation associated with environmental differences between upstream and downstream mangrove soils.

Mangrove forests are considered to be a highly productive ecosystem, but they are also generally nitrogen (N)-limited. Thus, soil N₂ fixation can be important for the stability of both mangrove ecosystem functions and upland N supply. This study evaluates the N₂ fixation activity and composition of relevant microorganisms in two coastal mangrove forests—the Guandu mangrove in an upstream estuary and the Bali mangrove in a downstream estuary—using the acetylene reduction method, real-time polymerase chain reaction, and next-generation sequencing. The results demonstrated that ambient nitrogenase activity was higher in downstream mangrove forests (13.2–15.6 nmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹ soil) than in upstream mangrove forests (0.2–1.4 nmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹ soil). However, both the maximum potential nitrogenase activity and nitrogenase gene (nifH gene) copy number were found to be higher in the upstream than in the downstream mangrove forests, implying that the nitrogenase activity and diazotrophic abundance may not necessarily be positively correlated. In addition, amended MoO₄ (which inhibits the activity of sulfate-reducing bacteria in N₂-fixation) yielded low nitrogenase activity, and sulfate-reducing bacteria made up 20–50% of the relative diazotrophic abundance in the mangrove forests, indicating that these bacteria might be the major active diazotrophs in this environment.

Elevation trends of macro organisms have long been well studied. However, whether microbes also exhibit such patterns of elevation change is unknown. Here, we investigated the changes in bamboo forest soil bacterial communities along six elevation gradients, from 600 to 1800 m a.s.l. in Mt. Da-an, a subtropical montane area in Nantou county at central Taiwan. Data from 16S rRNA gene clone libraries revealed that more than 70 % of the six communities contained Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria, although the relative abundance differed. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling analysis of the distribution of operational taxonomic units showed differences in bamboo soil bacterial communities across gradients. The bacterial communities at 1000 and 1200 m showed greater diversity than the communities at both lower (600 and 800 m) and higher (1400 and 1800 m) elevations. In contrast to the bacterial community trend, soil C and N and microbial biomass properties increased linearly with elevation. The bamboo soil bacterial community could interact with multiple factors such as soil organic matter content and temperature, for differences in composition and diversity with change in elevation.