Spatial and temporal dynamics of the microbial communities in soils cultivated with sugarcane

Author(s)

Thiago Gumiere

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Piracicaba.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALA/BC)
• Defense date: 2017-02-23

Examining board members

Fernando Dini Andreote; Brendan James Marc Bohannan; Rodrigo Mendes; Rodrigo Gouvêa Taketani

• Advisor: Fernando Dini Andreote

Abstract

The environmental conditions driving the microbial community dynamics in crop soils remain unclear. Here, we focused on the spatial and temporal dynamics of microbial communities in soils cultivated with sugarcane under different soil managements, during two years. Our work was divided into three essential parts, where i) we discuss ecological models and theories for the microbial exploration in crop soils, arguing that those ecological models, which partitioned the microbial communities, may increase the resolution of the environmental and the microbial interactions; ii) we developed a probabilistic model based on the occurrence frequency of microorganisms across systems identifying the core microbial community. The model is based on the Poisson distribution, and it was tested in four datasets available in the Earth Microbiome Project; iii) we identified the core bacterial and fungal communities across soils cultivated with sugarcane, verifying which abiotic components could drive the composition of groups. We increased the resolution of the environmental and the microbial interactions, showing that the core and the variable microbial communities are driven by distinct abiotic components. We also observed that the core and variable microbial communities harbor distinct potential functionality, as nitrogen fixation being more predicted to the core bacterial commmunity, and nitrification process for the variable bacterial community. Our finds increase the knowledge of microbial dynamics and functionality, helping to reveal and explore the crop system microbiome. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/18529-8 - Space-time dynamics of microorganism in soil of sugarcane under different managements
• Grantee: Thiago Gumiere
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate