Multiple ecological processes jointly drive the soil microbial community assembly in subalpine coniferous forests
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Microbiology
- Keywords
- ecological process, community assembly, phylogenetic structure, soil microbial community, functional traits
- Copyright
- © 2018 Zhao et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Multiple ecological processes jointly drive the soil microbial community assembly in subalpine coniferous forests. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27223v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27223v1
Abstract
The mechanisms underlying community dynamics, which govern the complicated biogeographical patterns of microbes, have long been a research hotspot in community ecology. However, the mixing of multiple ecological processes and the one-sidedness of analytical methods make it difficult to draw inferences about the community assembly mechanisms. In this study, we investigated the driving forces of the soil microbial community in subalpine coniferous forests of the Loess Plateau in Shanxi, China, by integrating multiple analytical methods. The results of the null model demonstrated that deterministic processes (especially interspecific relationships) were the main driving force of the soil microbial community assembly in this study area, relative to stochastic processes. Based on the results of the net relatedness index (NRI) and nearest taxon index (NTI), we inferred that historical and evolutionary factors, such as climate change and local diversification, may have similar effects on microbial community structure based on the climatic niche conservatism. Based on the results of a functional traits analysis, we found that the effects of ongoing ecological processes on the microbial community assembly varied among sites. Therefore, the functional structures seemed to be more related to ongoing ecological processes, whereas the phylogenetic structures seemed to be more related to historical and evolutionary factors, as well as the tradeoff between deterministic and stochastic processes. The functional and phylogenetic structures were mainly shaped by different ecological processes. By integrating multiple ecological processes, our results provide more details of the mechanisms driving the community assembly
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.