soil microbial diversity

Bacteria and fungi have an irreplaceable function in restoring and maintaining healthy ecosystem. However, little is known about the ecological patterns of bacterial and fungal communities in the soil from karst areas cultivated with vegetables. In this study, we divided Vegetable soil (the soil cultivated with vegetables) into two categories according to the type of vegetables cultivated: the Leafy soil (Cabbage soil, Kale soil, and Oilseed rape soil) and the Melon and fruit soil (Cucumber soil and Tomato soil) to research the ecological patterns of soil bacterial and fungal communities. The result showed that the contents of PHO, SU, UR, AN, OM, and TN in the Leafy vegetable soil were higher than those in the Melon and fruit vegetable soil, while the contents of TP, AP, and AK in the Leafy vegetable soil were lower than those in the Melon and fruit soil. Bacteria had a wider niche distribution than fungi in the Vegetable soil, Proteobacteria, Acidobacteriota, Actinobacteriota, and Chloroflexi were dominant bacterial phyla, while the dominant fungal phyla were different. Functional prediction showed the relative abundance of the Animal Parasite-Fungal Parasite functional group in the Melon and fruit soil was much lower than in the Leafy vegetable soil, and fungal - fungal intra-kingdom co-occurrence networks of the Melon and fruit soil contained more Keystone taxa than those of the Leafy vegetable soil. However, bacterial-fungal inter-kingdom and bacterial-bacterial intra-kingdom co-occurrence networks showed the opposite trend in both types of soils. Furthermore, TK and AP were the most crucial factors affecting bacterial and fungal communities, respectively. This indicates that the long-term cultivation of leafy vegetables may cause harm to the stability of soil fungal communities and soil health. Our findings have important implications for adopting rational cultivation management practices to improve soil health and ecosystem functions in karst areas.