Phylogenetic structure of soil bacterial communities. Ayora Prefire

We examined the distribution of bacterial taxa in humic Mediterranean soils dominated by Rosmarinus officinalis to infer processes underlying the community assembly of soil bacteria. Particularly, we pyrosequenced a phylogenetic marker (16S rRNA gene) to identify bacterial taxa in ten randomly selected plots. A total 10.279 sequencing reads were grouped into 2.289 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) defined at 97 % sequence identity. Soil samples were characterised using 6 biochemical and 18 physical and chemical variables.