Abstract
Forest reformation can improve productivity and ecological service functions of forest resources. Nonetheless, the influence of different ways of forest reformation on soil microbial communities is still a complex and controversial issue. In this study, we investigated the effects of supplementary seedling planting (hereafter referred to as “filling seedlings”) in secondary Pinus massoniana forests on soil bacterial community. We collected soil samples from original secondary P. massoniana forest and the forests filled with P. massoniana seedlings for 2, 4, and 6 years, respectively. We found that filling seedlings in the secondary P. massoniana forests changed the bacterial community structure compared to the original secondary forests. Filling seedlings in secondary P. massoniana forest significantly decreased soil bacterial abundance from 2.12 × 107 copies g−1 soil to 8.91 × 106 copies g−1 soil (n = 3) after six years of reformation, a decrease by 58.0%. Acidobacteriota (34.96% averagely) was the dominant phylum and Xiphinematobacteraceae (5.76% averagely) was the dominant family in all P. massoniana forests in this study. Soil parameters such as soil pH, soil organic matter, NH4+, NO3-, and total and soluble P were significantly correlated with the structure of bacterial communities (p < 0.05). Moreover, the bacterial community structure and diversity changed over time during forest recovery. Our study demonstrated that filling seedlings in secondary P. massoniana forests could change soil bacterial community, which might in turn affect the nutrient cycling. This study provides scientific basis for managing low quality P. massoniana forests.
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Data availability
Raw sequence data from the 16S rRNA genes analyzed in this study were uploaded to the Sequence Read Archive on the NCBI website under the BioProject accession number PRJNA1212573.
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Funding
The funding for this study was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32171760), National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant number: 2023YFD2303100 and 2025YFD2300300) and the Jiangsu University Talents Initiating Fund (22JDG057).
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Ning Pan analyzed the data and wrote the original paper; Yong-Feng Wang conceived and conducted the experiment and revised the paper; Peng Jia participated in field experiment; Yun-Long Zhang, Wen-Tao Qiao, Dao-Lin Du, Xiang-Zhen Li and Wei Han revised the paper.
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Pan, N., Zhang, YL., Jia, P. et al. Supplementary filling seedlings in secondary Pinus massoniana forests changed the structure of soil bacterial communities. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-45370-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-45370-y
