The power of species sorting: local factors drive bacterial community composition over a wide range of spatial scales.

ABSTRACT: There is a vivid debate on the relative importance of local and regional factors in shaping microbial communities, and on whether microbial organisms show a biogeographic signature in their distribution. Taking a metacommunity approach, spatial factors can become important either through dispersal limitation (compare large spatial scales) or mass effects (in case of strongly connected systems). We here analyze two datasets on bacterial communities [characterized by community fingerprinting through denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE)] in meso- to eutrophic shallow lakes to investigate the importance of spatial factors at three contrasting scales. Variation partitioning on datasets of both the bacterial communities of 11 shallow lakes that are part of a strongly interconnected and

SUBMITTER: Van der Gucht K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2154443 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature