Spatial scale affects the relative role of stochasticity versus determinism in soil bacterial communities in wheat fields across the North China Plain.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The relative importance of stochasticity versus determinism in soil bacterial communities is unclear, as are the possible influences that alter the balance between these. Here, we investigated the influence of spatial scale on the relative role of stochasticity and determinism in agricultural monocultures consisting only of wheat, thereby minimizing the influence of differences in plant species cover and in cultivation/disturbance regime, extending across a wide range of soils and climates of the North China Plain (NCP). We sampled 243 sites across 1092 km and sequenced the 16S rRNA bacterial gene using MiSeq. We hypothesized that determinism would play a relatively stronger role at the broadest scales, due to the strong influence of climate and soil differences in selec

SUBMITTER: Shi Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5799910 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature