Sequencing Data and Envirnomental factors -Body size determines soil multitrophic microbiota community assembly associated with soil and plant attributes in a tropical seasonal rainforest

Soil community assembly is vital for understanding soil biodiversity. However, soil community assembly, environmental factors, and linkages between soil microbiota taxonomic groups and their body size remain largely unexplored in tropical rainforests. Systematic and stratified random sampling was used to collect 243 soil and organism samples across a 20-hectare plot in a tropical rainforest in southwestern China. High-throughput sequencing, variation analysis, and principle coordinates of neighborhood matrices (PCNM) were performed. Soil community composition, diversity, spatial distribution, and assembly processes based on propagule size (including archaea, bacteria, fungi, and nematodes) were investigated. The results showed that (1) The community assembly of soil microorganisms was a stochastic process. The large soil organism (nematode) was a deterministic process at this scale. (2) The independent effect of habitat and its interaction with plants for richness, relative abundance, and community structure of soil organisms significantly decreased with increasing body size. Plant leaf phosphorus shaped the spatial structure distribution of soil total phosphorus and available phosphorus. It also significantly affected the community assembly of soil multitrophic communities. (3) Habitat, plant attributes, and spatial combined effects decreased with increasing body size. The effect of plant attributes was not significant alone. It only significantly decreased with increasing body size when combined with habitat. When the plant attribute was combined with a spatial pattern, it showed a reverse trend. The assembly processes of soil multitrophic communities are attributed to changes in aboveground plant attributes. This highlights the importance of aboveground and belowground linkages in differentiating soil multitrophic community assembly.