Montiers-sur-Saulx 2011 Metagenome. soil metagenome

The main objectives of this study were to determine the taxonomic and functional diversity of the forest soil bacterial communities and to decipher how the soil characteristics influence the structure and function of the bacterial communities. We hypothesised that the variations of concentrations of available nutritive cations as well as the difference of pH occurring along the soil successions would shape the structure and the function of the bacterial communities. To test this hypothesis, we sampled soil samples from the forest Long Term Observatory (LTO) of Montiers-sur-Saulx. This LTO is characterized by two neighbour soil successions (SS1 and SS2) developed on the same mineral parental materials, ranging from acidic to neutral pHs and dominated by beech (Fagus sativa) trees. In each soil succession, community structure, diversity and quantification were analysed using 16S rRNA gene targeted approaches.