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

ABSTRACT: 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

SUBMITTER: Burns JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4417136 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature