Soil bacterial diversity patterns and drivers along an elevational gradient on Shennongjia Mountain,China |
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| Authors: | Yuguang Zhang Jing Cong Hui Lu Guangliang Li Yadong Xue Ye Deng Hui Li Jizhong Zhou Diqiang Li |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Institute of Forestry Ecology, Environment and Protection, Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Environment of State Forestry Administration, The Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, China;2. School of Mineral Processing and Bioengineering, Central South University, Changsha, China;3. Research Center for Eco‐Environmental Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;4. Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Botany and Microbiology, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA;5. State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China |
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| Abstract: | Understanding biological diversity elevational pattern and the driver factors are indispensable to develop the ecological theories. Elevational gradient may minimize the impact of environmental factors and is the ideal places to study soil microbial elevational patterns. In this study, we selected four typical vegetation types from 1000 to 2800 m above the sea level on the northern slope of Shennongjia Mountain in central China, and analysed the soil bacterial community composition, elevational patterns and the relationship between soil bacterial diversity and environmental factors by using the 16S rRNA Illumina sequencing and multivariate statistical analysis. The results revealed that the dominant bacterial phyla were Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria and Verrucomicrobia, which accounted for over 75% of the bacterial sequences obtained from tested samples, and the soil bacterial operational taxonomic unit (OTU) richness was a significant monotonous decreasing (P < 0.01) trend with the elevational increasing. The similarity of soil bacterial population composition decreased significantly (P < 0.01) with elevational distance increased as measured by the Jaccard and Bray–Curtis index. Canonical correspondence analysis and Mantel test analysis indicated that plant diversity and soil pH were significantly correlated (P < 0.01) with the soil bacterial community. Therefore, the soil bacterial diversity on Shennongjia Mountain had a significant and different elevational pattern, and plant diversity and soil pH may be the key factors in shaping the soil bacterial spatial pattern. |
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