ABSTRACT
Soil microorganism was the engine of the migration and transformation of biological elements in the soil-plant system of wetland ecosystems. Exploring the relationship between plant community, soil properties, and spatial structure with soil microorganisms is the key to maintain the health and stability of wetlands. In order to examine the effects of plant community, soil properties, and spatial structure on the bacterial community in wetlands, we used two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN) to classify plant communities from 35 samples collected in Bitahai Wetland. We measured microbial community composition at the surface soil of the samples using high-throughput sequencing technology, and analyzed the relationship among plant community, soil pro-perties and spatial structure with bacterial community. The results showed that plant communities could classified into three different types by TWINSPAN. The physiognomy and structure of plant communities in same community type were relatively consistent. We found that quantitative classification had good applicability in vegetation classification of plateau wetland ecosystem. Acidobacteriota (21.0%), Chloroflexi (15.5%), Proteobacteria (15.3%) and Bacteroidetes (10.1%) had higher population densities (≥10%) in Bitahai Wetland. Analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) showed that different plant community types differed significantly in bacterial community composition, suggesting that plant communities could affect bacterial community. Cano-nical correspondence analysis (CCA) results showed that plant diversity, soil water content (SWC), pH, iron (Fe) and spatial structure were the dominated factors that significantly affecting bacterial community. The variance partitioning analysis (VPA) results showed that bacterial community was affected by single environment factors and their interactions. Our results highlighted that bacterial community is shaped by plant community, soil properties and spatial structure, with their effects being indivisible.
