Soil pH mediates the balance between stochastic and deterministic assembly of bacteria.

ABSTRACT: Little is known about the factors affecting the relative influences of stochastic and deterministic processes that govern the assembly of microbial communities in successional soils. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of bacterial communities using six different successional soil datasets distributed across different regions. Different relationships between pH and successional age across these datasets allowed us to separate the influences of successional age (i.e., time) from soil pH. We found that extreme acidic or alkaline pH conditions lead to assembly of phylogenetically more clustered bacterial communities through deterministic processes, whereas pH conditions close to neutral lead to phylogenetically less clustered bacterial communities with more stochasticity. We suggest that the i

SUBMITTER: Tripathi BM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5864241 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature