Leaf litter metagenome experiment raw sequence reads

Here we used a field experiment to address the following questions: 1) Is there stochastic variation in community composition? 2) Does stochastic variation in bacterial communities translate to stochasticity in functioning? 3) Does dispersal rate alter stochasticity. To address these questions, we performed a field experiment focusing on plant litter microbial communities. We homogenized irradiated plant litter substrate in replicate litterbags of the two mesh sizes (open and closed to dispersal). We then inoculated the litterbags with homogenized microbial communities and placed them in the field in close proximity to limit environmental variation. We next manipulated an environmental (deterministic) parameter, water availability (ambient vs. added precipitation). Our sampling design allowed us to quantify how variance in our measurements of taxonomic composition and functioning were distributed among our treatments (dispersal and water addition), stochasticity (bag replicates), and residual variation (measurement error).