Ammonia-oxidizing archaea and complete ammonia-oxidizing (comammox) bacteria, differentially contribute to ammonia oxidation in soil under precipitation gradient and land legacy

This study is carried out across different land legacy and precipitation gradients to determine how ammonia-oxidizing archaea and ammonia-oxidizing bacterial community structure and composition are regulated across precipitation gradients and land legacy. We hypothesized that a group of ammonia-oxidizing microbes will be more adapted to specific environmental conditions and would be differentially abundant across the environmental variables. We were also interested to decipher the functional mechanistic insights that were instrumental in driving the contribution of those microbes associated with the ammonia oxidation under varying environmental parameters.