Functional diversity of soil microbes across environmental gradients. UK SOILS

Numerous globally distributed 16S rRNA surveys of soil bacterial communities are now revealing consistent trends in the main environmental drivers of biodiversity. Soil pH is consistently revealed as the predominant correlate of taxonomic diversity, with low pH soils comprising less diversity and being dominated by a few broad taxonomic groups such as the oligotrophic acidobacteria phylum. What is less clear is what these broad differences in patterns of taxonomic diversity mean for the functional genetic potential of soils. The low culturability of many taxa from low pH soils means that they are significantly underrepresented in genome sequence databases. Therefore, this study aims to provide a metagenomic comparison of geographically isolated soils of low pH with neutral pH soils to identify any broad functional differences between soils of similar taxonomic composition.