Bacterial population succession and adaptation affected by insecticide application and soil spraying history

Although microbial communities have varying degrees of exposure to environmental stresses such as chemical pollution, little is known on how these communities respond to environmental disturbances and how past disturbance history affects these community-level responses. To comprehensively understand the effect of organophosphorus insecticide application on microbiota in soils with or without insecticide-spraying history, we investigated the microbial succession in response to the addition of fenitrothion (O,O-dimethyl O-(3-methyl-p-nitrophenyl) phosphorothioate, abbreviated as MEP) by culture-dependent experiments and deep sequencing of 16S rRNA genes. Despite similar microbial composition at the initial stage, microbial response to MEP application was remarkably different between soils with and without MEP-spraying history. MEP-degrading microbes more rapidly increased in the soils with MEP-spraying history, suggesting that MEP-degrading bacteria might already exist at a certain level and could quickly respond to MEP re-treatment in the soil. Culture-dependent and -independent evaluations revealed that MEP-degrading Burkholderia bacteria are predominant in soils after MEP application, limited members of which might play a pivotal role in MEP-degradation in soils. Notably, deep sequencing also revealed that some methylotrophs dramatically increased after MEP application, strongly suggesting that these bacteria play a role in the consumption and removal of methanol, a harmful derivative from MEP-degradation, for better growth of MEP-degrading bacteria. This comprehensive study demonstrated the succession and adaptation processes of microbial communities under MEP application, which were critically affected by past experience of insecticide-spraying.