Determinants of Soil Bacterial and Fungal Community Composition Toward Carbon-Use Efficiency Across Primary and Secondary Forests in a Costa Rican Conservation Area. soil metagenome

For this study, the overall aim was to characterize various soil abiotic properties, along with patterns of the soil bacterial and fungal community composi- tion across a primary and secondary forest gradient in the Northern Zone of Costa Rica. The main objective was to de- termine which soil abiotic factors structure these soil bacterial and fungal communities across secondary forests to under- stand what may be a potential driver of these microbial com- munities in secondary forest succession that is conducive for carbon-use efficiency. To address this, four questions were asked: (i) How do various soil abiotic factors and soil micro- bial biomass C differ across a primary forest, a regenerating secondary forest previously used as pasture, and a secondary forest allowed to immediately regenerate following harvest? (ii) Are there certain soil abiotic factors that are associated with changes in the soil microbial biomass C patterns across these habitats? (iii) How do soil bacterial and fungal commu- nity composition differ across these forests? (iv) Which soil abiotic factors best explain the soil bacterial and fungal com- munity composition structure across these different forest types? These comparisons of soil abiotic factors and soil bac- terial and fungal community composition were examined from three different upland forest land-use types all originally part of a large single tract of primary forest, with the same soil type and topography but have been managed differently in the past ~ 40 years in Costa Rica.