Structure and co-occurrence patterns in microbial communities under acute environmental stress reveal ecological factors fostering resilience.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the factors that modulate bacterial community assembly in natural soils is a longstanding challenge in microbial community ecology. In this work, we compared two microbial co-occurrence networks representing bacterial soil communities from two different sections of a pH, temperature and humidity gradient occurring along a western slope of the Andes in the Atacama Desert. In doing so, a topological graph alignment of co-occurrence networks was used to determine the impact of a shift in environmental variables on OTUs taxonomic composition and their relationships. We observed that a fraction of association patterns identified in the co-occurrence networks are persistent despite large environmental variation. This apparent resilience seems to be due to: (1) a proportion of OTUs

SUBMITTER: Mandakovic D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5897386 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature