Comparing biodiversity in urban and forest soils

Bacterial and fungal communities in urban and forest soils

Continuing with exploring terrestrial biodiversity we selected a comparative study that investigates how increasing human disturbance influences soil microbial communities. Researchers sampled forest soils from national parks, managed forests, suburban and urban areas, representing an increasing level of anthropogenic disturbance (Scholier et al 2023). Amplifying DNA from 320 samples across these habitats revealed that both fungal and bacterial diversity increased with increasing disturbance. Urban soils also showed a distinctive community structure and had a lower abundance of ectomycorrhizal fungi. DNA metabarcoding techniques allowed the characterisation of soil bacterial and fungal communities across a range of forest soils and gave insights into the effect of anthropogenic disturbance on soil ecosystem functioning.

DNA barcode/s used for this study: 16S rDNA, ITS2 rDNA

Sequencing technology: Illumina MiSeq

You can dive into the full article to get further details: Urban forest soils harbour distinct and more diverse communities of bacteria and fungi compared to less disturbed forest soils.