The soil microbial OTUs data from the a study about the influence of rainfall patterns on karst soil microorganisms

Precipitation pattern changes may dramatically disturb the soil microbial community, especially in fragile karst ecosystems. However, the impact of different intensities and distributions of precipitation within a period of time on karst soil microbial communities has not been fully investigated. Therefore, based on soil and climatic conditions in a karst area, we conducted a simulation experiment to study the impact of changes in precipitation patterns on the soil microbial community. We investigated the changes in relative abundance, diversity, niche width, assembly processes and co-occurrence networks of bacterial and fungal communities under different precipitation patterns. The results showed that under moderate drought × even precipitation treatment, the relative importance of stochastic processes in microbial assembly processes was the lowest, and the bacterial community had the highest stability, which indicated that the microbes in karst soil may have adapted to relatively drought environments. Under the moderate drought × intense precipitation treatment, the bacterial community had the highest species diversity, relative importance of stochastic processes and nodes and negative edges in co-occurrence networks, which indicated that intense precipitation can impose a significant disturbance on the microbial community in karst soil. The SWC, SOC, N, and P contents significantly impact the relative abundance of microbial phyla, and SWC and SOC are the two most important environmental factors mediating bacterial and fungal community assembly. Our findings suggest that the increase in intense precipitation in the future will significantly alter the characteristics of soil microbial communities and their ecological functions.