Local and Regional Scale Heterogeneity Drive Bacterial Community Diversity and Composition in a Polar Desert.

ABSTRACT: The distribution of organisms in an environment is neither uniform nor random but is instead spatially patterned. The factors that control this patterning are complex and the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Soil microbes are critical to ecosystem function but exhibit highly complex distributions and community dynamics due in large part to the scale-dependent effects of environmental heterogeneity. To better understand the impact of environmental heterogeneity on the distribution of soil microbes, we sequenced the 16S rRNA gene from bacterial communities in the microbe-dominated polar desert ecosystem of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV), Antarctica. Significant differences in key edaphic variables and alpha diversity were observed among the three lake basins of the Taylor Valley (

SUBMITTER: Feeser KL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6110917 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature