Fire effects on bacterial and archaeal communities

We examined the distribution of archaeal and bacterial taxa in Mediterranean soils exposed to a single fire event between 1994 and 2014. Particularly, we pyrosequenced a phylogenetic marker (16S rRNA gene) to identify archaeal and bacterial lineages in 3 replicated chronosequences, including 7 to 8 sites per chronosequence, two plots per site (burned and control) and three 25 m transects per plot (i.e. (7+7+8) x 2 x 3 = 150 samples). The initial processing to exclude short sequences (< 150 bp), primers and barcodes generated a total of 1,932,960 prokaryotic sequencing reads (provided here). Soil samples were characterized using 4 biochemical and 10 physical and chemical variables.