Soil bacterial community Targeted Locus/Loci. uncultured bacterium

16S rRNA sequences obtained from soils from Natural Forest and Grassland in the Pampa biome. The interaction among plants, soil and microorganisms is considered to be the major driver of the ecosystem functions and any modification on plant cover and/or soil properties might affect the microbial structure, which, in turn, will influence the ecological processes. Assuming that soil properties are the major drivers of soil bacterial diversity and structure, within the same soil type, can the plant cover cause significant shifts on soil bacterial community composition? To address this question we used 16S rRNA pyrosequencing to detect differences in diversity, composition and/or relative abundance of bacterial taxa from an area covered by pristine forest and eight year old grassland surrounded by this forest.