pH affects bacterial community composition in soils across the Huashan Watershed, China

To investigate soil bacterial richness and diversity and to determine the correlations between bacterial communities and soil properties, 8 soil samples were collected from the Huashan watershed in Anhui, China. Subsequently, 454 high-throughput pyrosequencing and bioinformatics analyses were performed to examine the soil bacterial community compositions. The operational taxonomic unit richness of the bacterial community ranged from 3664 to 5899, and the diversity indices, including Chao1, Shannon-Wiener, and Faith's phylogenetic diversity ranged from 7751 to 15 204, 7.386 to 8.327, and 415.77 to 679.11, respectively. The 2 most dominant phyla in the soil samples were Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria. The richness and diversity of the bacterial community were positively correlated with soil pH. The Mantel test revealed that the soil pH was the dominant factor influencing the bacterial community. The positive modular structure of co-occurrence patterns at the genus level was discovered by network analysis. The results obtained in this study provide useful information that enhances our understanding of the effects of soil properties on the bacterial communities.