Functional Diversity of Soil Bacterial Communities in the Tabonuco Forest:Interaction of Anthropogenic and Natural Disturbance

摘要

Based on the differential catabolism of a suite of 128 carbon sources by soilbacterial communities, the authors focus on four aspects of functional diversity (total substrate acivity, substrate richness, substrate evenness, substrate diversity) in the Tabonuco Forest of Puerto Rico, and assess the degree to which their spatial variability is a consequence of historical land use or impacts of Hurricane Hugo. Considerable microspatial heterogeneity characterizes the functional diversity of forest soil communities, but the degree of hurricane damage to above-ground plant communities is positively related to all four indexes of functional diversity 5 years after the hurricane. No differences in functional diversity were detected with respect to historical landuse, after controlling for the effects of hurricane damage. However, this lack of significance may be an artifact because the spatial distribution of hurricane damage is not independent of historical land use.