Soil microbes support Janzen's mountain passes hypothesis: The role of local-scale climate variability along a tropical montane gradient.

ABSTRACT: Tropical montane ecosystems are the centers of biodiversity, and Janzen proposed that mountain climate variability plays a key role in sustaining this biodiversity. We test this hypothesis for soil bacteria and fungi along a 265-1,400 m elevational gradient on Hainan Island of tropical China, representing diverse vegetation types from deciduous monsoon forest to cloud forest. We found that bacterial and fungal diversity declined as elevation increased, and the dissimilarity of both groups increased with increasing separation in elevation, although changes in bacteria were larger than in fungi. Seasonal alterations and the range of soil moisture in the growing season were found to be the dominant drivers of fungal richness and Shannon diversity, whereas soil pH was the major driver of bacte

SUBMITTER: Feng Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10040759 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature