Structure and Diversity of Soil Bacterial Communities in Offshore Islands

The effects of biogeographical separation and parent material differences in soil bacterial structure and diversity in offshore islands remain poorly understood. In the current study, we used next-generation sequencing to characterize the differences in soil bacterial communities in five offshore subtropical granite islands (Matsu Islets, MI) of mainland China and two offshore tropical andesite islands (Orchid [OI] and Green Islands [GI]) of Taiwan. The soils of OI and GI were more acidic and had higher organic carbon and total nitrogen content than MI soils. The bacterial communities were dominated by Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria but had different relative abundance because soils were derived from different parent material and because of geographic distance. Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling revealed that the communities formed different clusters among different parent material and geographically distributed soils. The alpha-diversity in bacterial communities was higher in tropical than subtropical soils. Mantel test and redundancy analysis indicated that bacterial diversity and compositions of OI and GI soils, respectively, were positively correlated with soil pH, organic carbon, total nitrogen, microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen. These results suggest that variations in soil properties of offshore islands could result from differences in soil parent material. Distinct soils derived from different parent material and geographic distance could in turn alter the bacterial communities.