Environmental Factors Driving Spatial Heterogeneity in Desert Halophile Microbial Communities.

ABSTRACT: Spatial heterogeneity in microbial communities is observed in all natural ecosystems and can stem from both adaptations to local environmental conditions as well as stochastic processes. Extremophile microbial communities inhabiting evaporitic halite nodules (salt rocks) in the Atacama Desert, Chile, are a good model ecosystem for investigating factors leading to microbiome heterogeneity, due to their diverse taxonomic composition and the spatial segregation of individual nodules. We investigated the abiotic factors governing microbiome composition across different spatial scales, allowing for insight into the factors that govern halite colonization from regional desert-wide scales to micro-scales within individual nodules. We found that water availability and community drift account for m

SUBMITTER: Uritskiy G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7606970 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature