Reaction of soil bacteria to drought and rewetting stress may depend on soil chemical properties. The objectives of this study were to test the reaction of different bacterial phyla to drought and rewetting stress and to assess the influence of different soil chemical properties on the reaction of soil bacteria to this kind of stress. The soil samples were taken at ten forest sites and measured for pH and the contents of organic C (C_org) and total N (N_t), Zn, Cu, and Pb. The samples were kept without water addition at 20 – 30 °C for 8 weeks and subsequently rewetted to achieve moisture equal to 50 – 60 % of their maximum water-holding capacity. Prior to the drought period and 24 h after the rewetting, the structure of soil bacterial communities was determined using pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA genes. The drought and rewetting stress altered bacterial community structure. Gram-positive bacterial phyla, Actinobacteria and Firmicutes, increased in relative proportion after the stress, whereas the Gram-negative bacteria in most cases decreased. The largest decrease in relative abundance was for Gammaproteobacteria and Bacteroidetes. For several phyla the reaction to drought and rewetting stress depended on the chemical properties of soils. Soil pH was the most important soil property influencing the reaction of a number of soil bacterial groups (including all classes of Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Acidobacteria, and others) to drought and rewetting stress. For several bacterial phyla the reaction to the stress depended also on the contents of N_t and C_org in soil. The effect of heavy metal pollution was also noticeable, although weaker compared to other chemical soil properties. We conclude that soil chemical properties should be considered when assessing the effect of stressing factors on soil bacterial communities.

Despite the global importance of forests, it is virtually unknown how their soil microbial communities adapt at the phylogenetic and functional level to long-term metal pollution. Studying 12 sites located along two distinct gradients of metal pollution in Southern Poland revealed that functional potential and diversity (assessed using GeoChip 4.2) were highly similar across the gradients despite drastically diverging metal contamination levels. Metal pollution level did, however, significantly impact bacterial community structure (as shown by MiSeq Illumina sequencing of 16S rRNA genes), but not bacterial taxon richness and community composition. Metal pollution caused changes in the relative abundance of specific bacterial taxa, including Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Planctomycetes and Proteobacteria. Also, a group of metal-resistance genes showed significant correlations with metal concentrations in soil. Our study showed that microbial communities are resilient to metal pollution; despite differences in community structure, no clear impact of metal pollution levels on overall functional diversity was observed. While screens of phylogenetic marker genes, such as 16S rRNA genes, provide only limited insight into resilience mechanisms, analysis of specific functional genes, e.g. involved in metal resistance, appears to be a more promising strategy.

Heavy metals can cause a decrease in the taxonomic diversity of soil communities. Because of functional redundancy, it remains unclear to what extent different functions performed by the soil microbial communities may be affected by pollution. We studied the impact of metal contamination on soil bacterial and fungal functional diversity, active microbial biomass, and soil respiration rate. Soil samples were collected from 39 sites along three forest and five meadow pollution transects near an abandoned Pb/Zn smelter in Avonmouth (UK) and Ni smelter in Clydach (UK), in a Cu mining and smelting region near Glogow (Poland), and in a Zn/Pb mining and smelting region near Olkusz (Poland). Biolog® GN2 and SFN2 plates were used to study the bacterial and fungal functional diversity, which subsequently was expressed as Shannon's diversity index (H′). The active microbial biomass was measured as substrate-induced respiration. We found that the bacterial functional diversity significantly decreased, whereas the fungal functional diversity slightly increased, with increasing metal concentration. We also observed a slight negative effect of metal pollution on the active microbial biomass. No relationship was found between metal contamination and total soil respiration rate. This suggests a higher sensitivity of bacterial functional diversity as an indicator for the effects of metal pollution compared with overall soil respiration. All microbial parameters were affected by nutrient concentrations and/or soil pH.