Abstract
Aims
Soil hydrolysable P can be a main P source for biota in P-limited tropical rain forests. Soil hydrolysable P occurs in various chemical fractions, including, monoester P, diester P, pyrophosphate and phytate, which need enzymatic hydrolysis into orthophosphate before their assimilation into biota. We examined whether P-limited plants and microbes preferentially hydrolyzed specific fraction of soil hydrolysable P and whether those in different successional stages had different abilities to hydrolyze various soil hydrolysable P.
Methods
We measured four classes of phosphatase (phosphomonoesterase, PME; phosphodiesterase, PDE; pyrophosphatase, PyP; and phytase, PhT) activities for fine-roots and soils in nitrogen (N) and P fertilized primary and secondary tropical rain forests in Sabah, Malaysia.
Results
P fertilization reduced PME, PyP and PhT activities for fine-roots and PME and PyP activities for soils. Fine-roots in primary forests had higher PME and PyP activities whereas those in secondary forests had higher PhT activities.
Conclusions
We suggest that P-limited trees and microbes depend more on hydrolysable P degraded by one step of enzymatic reaction (monoester P, pyrophosphate, and phytate) as a P source. We also suggest that trees have different soil-organic-P acquisition strategies in association with their life history strategies.
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Abbreviations
- PME:
-
Phosphomonoesterase
- PDE:
-
Phosphodiesterase
- PyP:
-
Pyrophosphatase
- PhT:
-
Phytase
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Acknowledgements
We thank staffs of Sabah Forestry Department and Forest Research Centre, Sabah, for their kind assistance in all aspects. We thank local coworkers for the assistance in fieldwork. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI JP22255002 to K. Kitayama and JP15K18711 to N. Imai, and partially supplemented by JSPS KAKENHI JP16J11390 to D. Yokoyama.
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Yokoyama, D., Imai, N. & Kitayama, K. Effects of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization on the activities of four different classes of fine-root and soil phosphatases in Bornean tropical rain forests. Plant Soil 416, 463–476 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-017-3225-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-017-3225-x