Study of of microbial diversity in mountain soils under different grazing-related disturbance levels

We exploited a combination of traditional vegetation surveys and next-generation sequencing (using taxon-specific genetic markers) to characterise plant, fungal, bacterial and metazoan communities along a natural disturbance gradient within the alpine biogeographic zone, to address the hypothesis that the diversity of heterotroph communities reflects patterns of plant diversity. A natural experiment was used, comprising four ecologically related vegetation types successing from extremely nitrophilous disturbed cattle resting areas, through intermediate and lightly disturbed pastures, to undisturbed climax woody vegetation.