soil metagenome Targeted Locus (Loci)

It is well known that there are large changes in bacterial community composition and diversity in response to environmental variables such as temperature, precipitation and solar radiation. However, we know remarkably little about their response to variation in climate conditions (e.g., temperature, precipitation) as well as resource availability (e.g., total soil carbon and nitrogen). We investigate the relative impacts of climate and resource conditions on the biogeography of soil microbial communities both across broad (i.e., along a natural mountain elevation gradient) and fine scale (i.e., variation related to different slope and aspects across a mountain ridge) in NZ's tussock mountain grassland. The aim of our project is to quantify the influence of microclimate on the diversity and composition of microbial communities.