Abstract:Broad-leaved forest, Chinese fir forest, Mason pine forest and Bamboo grove are widely distributed in subtropical areas of South China. To investigate more information of soil bacterial community structures of natural forests, PCR-DGGE technology was applied to study structures of the soil bacterial communities in these four types of natural forests distributed in from the Tianmu Mountains and Linglong Mountains. Results show that the number of DGGE strips detected in the four kinds of forest soils in the Tianmu Mountains was 49, 45, 51 and 51, and in the Linglong Mountains, it was 42, 42, 44 and 48, respectively. DGGE analysis reveals little variation between the soils in fingerprint. The four soils in the Tianmu Mountains had 31 DGGE strips in common, while the soils in the Linglong Mountains had 23, accounting for 61% and 48% or more, respectively, of the total strips detected, and what is more, each type of forest had its own characteristic strips;Relatively speaking, the two sample lots of Chinese fir forest were both quite low in similarity to the other sample lots of other forest stands in soil bacterial structure, being 0.72 and 0.68 respectively in value, and diversity indices of their soil bacterial communities were obviously lower than the others’. However, Bamboo groves and Mason pine forests were not much different in soil bacteria diversity. DGGE analysis of soil bacteria from two sampling sites revealed that the effect of soil properties was greater than that of vegetation on soil bacterial community structure.