Pyrosequencing reveals changes in soil bacterial communities after conversion of Yungas forests to agriculture.

ABSTRACT: The Southern Andean Yungas in Northwest Argentina constitute one of the main biodiversity hotspots in the world. Considerable changes in land use have taken place in this ecoregion, predominantly related to forest conversion to croplands, inducing losses in above-ground biodiversity and with potential impact on soil microbial communities. In this study, we used high-throughput pyrosequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene to assess whether land-use change and time under agriculture affect the composition and diversity of soil bacterial communities. We selected two areas dedicated to sugarcane and soybean production, comprising both short- and long-term agricultural sites, and used the adjacent native forest soils as a reference. Land-use change altered the composition of bacterial communiti

SUBMITTER: Montecchia MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4368548 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature