Macrosystems Results for ITS in 6 Plot Soil Samples

Patterns of biodiversity, such as the increase toward the tropics and the peaked curve during ecological succession, are fundamental phenomena for ecology. Such patterns have multiple, interacting causes, but temperature emerges as a dominant factor across organisms from microbes to trees and mammals, and across terrestrial, marine, and freshwater environments. However, there is little consensus on the underlying mechanisms, even as global temperatures increase and the need to predict their effects becomes more pressing. The purpose of this project is to generate and test theory for how temperature impacts biodiversity through its effect on biochemical processes and metabolic rate. A combination of standardized surveys in the field and controlled experiments in the field and laboratory measure diversity of three taxa -- trees, invertebrates, and microbes -- and key biogeochemical processes of decomposition in seven forests distributed along a geographic gradient of increasing temperature from cold temperate to warm tropical. This data set captures temperature-dependent latitudinal microbial diversity sampled for in forest soils based on taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity observed in the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) between 18S and 28S ribosomal RNA genes for determining biodiversity of fungi, which are the second largest kingdom of eukaryotic life and one of the most highly diverse groups of organisms on Earth. This sequencing was done by the University of Oklahoma Institute for Environmental Genomics as part of a macrosystems biodiversity and latitude project supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement DEB#1065836.