Soil microbial community variation correlates most strongly with plant species identity, followed by soil chemistry, spatial location and plant genus

Soil ecologists have debated the relative importance of dispersal limitation and ecological factors in determining the structure of soil microbial communities. Recent evidence suggests that \"everything is not everywhere\", and that microbial communities are influenced by both dispersal limitation and ecological factors. However, we still do not understand the relative explanatory power of spatial and ecological factors, including plant species identity and even plant relatedness, for different fractions of the soil microbial community (i.e. bacterial and fungal communities). To ask whether factors such as plant species, soil chemistry, spatial location, and plant relatedness influence rhizosphere community composition, we examined field-collected rhizosphere soil of seven congener pairs that occur at Bodega Bay Marine Reserve, CA, USA. We characterized differences in bacterial and fungal communities using Terminal-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism. Plant species identity was the s...

土壤生态学家们长期围绕扩散限制与生态因子在塑造土壤微生物群落结构中的相对重要性展开学术争论。近期研究证据表明，并非所有微生物类群都无所不在，且微生物群落同时受到扩散限制与生态因子的共同调控。然而，针对土壤微生物群落的不同组分（即细菌群落与真菌群落），空间因子与包括植物物种属性、乃至植物亲缘关系在内的生态因子的相对解释力，目前仍未明确。为探究植物物种、土壤化学性质、空间位置以及植物亲缘关系等因子是否会影响根际微生物群落组成，我们采集了美国加利福尼亚州博德加湾海洋保护区内7个同属物种对的野外根际土壤样本开展相关研究。我们采用末端限制性片段长度多态性（Terminal-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism）技术对细菌与真菌群落的组成差异进行了表征。植物物种属性是s...