Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) Counts at Sampling Subplots at HJA, HFR, BCI, CWT, LUQ, and NWT for N2O-reducing Microbial Communities

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. N2O is reduced to N2 exclusively by microorganisms but little is known about the diversity and geographic distribution of N2O-reducing communities in forest soils across a temperature gradient. To this end, nosZ (N2O-reducing) amplicons were sequenced by MiSeq and sorted into Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) which could then be compared across sites for distribution, richness, and diversity indices. This work was completed 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.