Latitudinal shifts in native and invasive plants rhizosphere microbial community based on Fungal ITS

In this study, to test the latitudinal shifts in soil microbial community, we collected rhizosphere soil samples from the invasive plant Alternanthera philoxeroides and its native congener A.sessilis across 21 to 36.8 north latitudes in China on the land. And along the latitudinal gradient, soil pH value increased for both species with latitudes, soil total nitrogen and carbon contents increased with latitudes only for the native plant, while soil total phosphorus not changed with latitudes for both species. We characterized soil microbial community composition by high-throughput sequencing. Soil fungal ITS genes were amplified with the forward primer ITSF2_KYO2 and the reverse primer ITSF3. Then these genes were sequenced with Illumina Miseq system.