Microbes follow Humboldt: temperature drives plant and soil microbial diversity patterns from the Amazon to the Andes.

ABSTRACT: More than 200 years ago, Alexander von Humboldt reported that tropical plant species richness decreased with increasing elevation and decreasing temperature. Surprisingly, coordinated patterns in plant, bacterial, and fungal diversity on tropical mountains have not yet been observed, despite the central role of soil microorganisms in terrestrial biogeochemistry and ecology. We studied an Andean transect traversing 3.5 km in elevation to test whether the species diversity and composition of tropical forest plants, soil bacteria, and fungi follow similar biogeographical patterns with shared environmental drivers. We found coordinated changes with elevation in all three groups: species richness declined as elevation increased, and the compositional dissimilarity among communities increased wi

SUBMITTER: Nottingham AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6850070 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature