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. 2023 Aug 24:11:e15822.
doi: 10.7717/peerj.15822. eCollection 2023.

Signatures of prescribed fire in the microbial communities of Cornus florida are largely undetectable five months post-fire

Beant Kapoor #  1 , Aaron Onufrak #  1 , William Klingeman Iii  2 , Jennifer M DeBruyn  3 , Melissa A Cregger  4 , Emma Willcox  5 , Robert Trigiano  1 , Denita Hadziabdic  1
Affiliations

Signatures of prescribed fire in the microbial communities of Cornus florida are largely undetectable five months post-fire

Beant Kapoor et al. PeerJ. .

Abstract

Prescribed burn is a management tool that influences the physical structure and composition of forest plant communities and their associated microorganisms. Plant-associated microorganisms aid in host plant disease tolerance and increase nutrient availability. The effects of prescribed burn on microorganisms associated with native ecologically and economically important tree species, such as Cornus florida L. (flowering dogwood), are not well understood, particularly in aboveground plant tissues (e.g., leaf, stem, and bark tissues). The objective of this study was to use 16S rRNA gene and ITS2 region sequencing to evaluate changes in bacterial and fungal communities of five different flowering dogwood-associated niches (soil, roots, bark, stem, and leaves) five months following a prescribed burn treatment. The alpha- and beta-diversity of root bacterial/archaeal communities differed significantly between prescribed burn and unburned control-treated trees. In these bacterial/archaeal root communities, we also detected a significantly higher relative abundance of sequences identified as Acidothermaceae, a family of thermophilic bacteria. No significant differences were detected between prescribed burn-treated and unburned control trees in bulk soils or bark, stem, or leaf tissues. The findings of our study suggest that prescribed burn does not significantly alter the aboveground plant-associated microbial communities of flowering dogwood trees five months following the prescribed burn application. Further studies are required to better understand the short- and long-term effects of prescribed burns on the microbial communities of forest trees.

Keywords: 16S rRNA; Cornus florida; Flowering dogwood; Internal transcribed spacer (ITS); Microbial communities; Microbiome; Native trees; Phytobiome; Plant–microbe interactions; Prescribed fire.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Hill numbers (q0–q2) of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida)-associated fungal (A–C) and bacterial/archaeal (D–F) communities from unburned control and prescribed burn plots.
Letters indicate significant mean differences determined using Tukey post-hoc test. Color represents prescribed burn treatment.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Hill numbers (q0–q2) of bulk soil fungal (A–C) and bacterial/archaeal (D–F) communities of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) trees.
Color represents prescribed burn treatment.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Principal component analysis (PCoA) of (A) all flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) associated fungal communities and (B) root, (C) bark, (D) stem, and (E) leaf fungal communities from unburned control and prescribed burn plots using Bray-Curtis distances.
In (A), color represents plant niche and shape represents prescribed burn treatment. In (B–F) color represents prescribed burn treatment. Ellipses represent standard deviation of axis scores from prescribed burn treatment centroids.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Principal component analysis (PCoA) of (A) all flowering dogwood associated bacterial/archaeal communities and flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) (B) root, (C) bark, (D) stem, (E) and leaf bacterial/archaeal communities from unburned control and prescribed burn plots using Bray-Curtis distances.
In (A), color represents plant niche and shape represents prescribed burn treatment. In (B–F) color represents prescribed burn treatment. Ellipses represent standard deviation of axis scores from prescribed burn treatment centroids.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) of bulk soil (A) fungal communities and (B) bacterial/archaeal communities from the base of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) trees in unburned control and prescribed burn plots using Bray-Curtis distances.
Colors represent prescribed burn treatment. Ellipses represent standard deviation of axis scores from prescribed burn treatment centroids.
Figure 6
Figure 6. Distance-based redundancy analysis (dbRDA) of soil physicochemical properties and flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) root bacterial/archaeal communities from unburned control and prescribed burn treated plots.
Points and ellipses are colored by prescribed burn treatment. Black arrows represent those which significantly (P < 0.05) drive differences in community composition whereas those in gray are not significant (P > 0.05). Ellipses represent standard deviation of axis scores from prescribed burn treatment centroids.
Figure 7
Figure 7. Relative abundance of phyla in the fungal communities of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) (A) roots, (B) bark, (C) stems, (D) leaves and (E) bulk soils.
Other category represents phyla which do not comprise at least 1% of the total sequences within each niche.
Figure 8
Figure 8. Relative abundance of phyla in the bacterial/archaeal communities of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) (A) roots, (B) bark, (C) stems, (D) leaves and (E) bulk soils.
Other category represents phyla which do not comprise at least 1% of the total sequences within each niche.
Figure 9
Figure 9. Relative abundance of ASVs identified to (A) Acidothermus and (B) Isosphaeraceae in the roots of prescribed burn treated and unburned control flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) trees.
Colors represent prescribed burn treatment.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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