Effect of land use change and sugarcane rhizosphere on the structure and abundance of Bacteria and Verrucomicrobia communities

Author(s)

Andressa Monteiro Venturini

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Piracicaba.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA/STB)
• Defense date: 2014-11-12

Examining board members

Tsai Siu Mui; Jorge Luiz Mazza Rodrigues; Jackson Antonio Marcondes de Souza

• Advisor: Tsai Siu Mui

Abstract

The abundance and diversity of soil microbial communities can be influenced by many factors, mainly associated with soil type, its coverage and use. The soil microbiota has great importance due to the processes performed by its organisms, essential for all terrestrial ecosystems. Despite the great complexity associated with these studies, the factors that affect the microbial communities can be better explained through the research of specific groups. In this sense, the bacterial phylum Verrucomicrobia, a ubiquitous soil group, presents high abundance in different environments, which suggests its great ecological importance. But due to the difficulty of isolating its organisms, little is known about the ecology of the phylum. The present work was developed with the objective of analyzing the effect of land use changes and sugarcane rhizosphere on the structure and abundance of Bacteria and Verrucomicrobia communities. For this purpose, soil samples were collected in areas under different land uses in a sugarcane mill in Piracicaba (SP). The samples were used in two separate studies. In the first, the microbial communities present in soil samples obtained in the sampling areas were analyzed and, in the second, taken from a controlled experiment conducted in a greenhouse to analyze the effect of land use and, especially, the rhizosphere on the communities. The communities were evaluated for their abundance, by the qPCR technique, and structure, by T-RFLP. In the first study, the phylum diversity was also accessed with the development of 16S rRNA gene libraries. The results from the studies indicate that bacterial and, especially, the phylum community were affected by land use and the management adopted in each area, which evidences the importance of conservationist systems. The analysis of the clone library demonstrated that the phylum Verrucomicrobia presented greater diversity in native vegetation than in the sugarcane fields. Additionally, the incidence and abundance of the group subdivisions have been changed in accordance with land use. The structure and abundance of the communities were also influenced by the rhizosphere, results of great interest to the reserach of the phylum, since few studies have analyzed the rhizosphere effect on its organisms. Furthermore, the high abundance of the phylum found in the study, which has been commonly underestimated, emphasizes the importance of research with specific focus on groups of interest (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/05087-7 - Detection, quantification and sequencing of 16s rRNA and pmoA genes of the phylum Verrucomicrobia in soils under sugarcane cultivation
• Grantee: Andressa Monteiro Venturini
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master