How Important Are the Relations between Vegetation Diversity and Bacterial Functional Diversity for the Functioning of Novel Ecosystems?

Abstract

Understanding ecosystem development of post-mining areas requires observing the development of the plant and microbial communities. It is widely known that mutual interaction is important for both of these groups, and both benefit significantly. The aim of this study was to broaden the knowledge about the relation between the vegetation and functional diversity of bacterial communities in novel ecosystems of post-mining areas and to discuss the potential applicability of methods of studies of bacterial functional diversity in these ecosystems with special attention paid to the BIOLOG method. The functional diversity of microbial communities of five types of microhabitats of post-coal mining heap (Upper Silesia, Poland) was studied using the BIOLOG method. Four of them were covered by spontaneously developed vegetation (two dominated by grasses Calamagrostis epigejos and Poa compressa and two others by dicotyledonous species Daucus carota and Tussilago farfara). The results obtained for vegetated microhabitats were compared with the diversity of microbial communities from non-vegetated types of microhabitat. Our study confirmed that microbial functional diversity measured by the summed area under the curve for all substrates, the richness index, the Shannon-Wiener index and the evenness index mirrors aboveground vegetation diversity. All of these measures differ, especially between non-vegetated patches and grassland patches dominated by C. epigejos and P. compressa.