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Plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms

Soils harbor large, diverse microbial communities critical for local and global ecosystem functioning that are controlled by multiple and poorly understood processes. In particular, while there is observational evidence of relationships between both biotic and abiotic conditions and microbial compos...

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Autores principales: Reese, Aspen T., Lulow, Kyrstin, David, Lawrence A., Wright, Justin P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5773302/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29375790
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.3734
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author Reese, Aspen T.
Lulow, Kyrstin
David, Lawrence A.
Wright, Justin P.
author_facet Reese, Aspen T.
Lulow, Kyrstin
David, Lawrence A.
Wright, Justin P.
author_sort Reese, Aspen T.
collection PubMed
description Soils harbor large, diverse microbial communities critical for local and global ecosystem functioning that are controlled by multiple and poorly understood processes. In particular, while there is observational evidence of relationships between both biotic and abiotic conditions and microbial composition and diversity, there have been few experimental tests to determine the relative importance of these two sets of factors at local scales. Here, we report the results of a fully factorial experiment manipulating soil conditions and plant cover on old‐field mesocosms across a latitudinal gradient. The largest contributor to beta diversity was site‐to‐site variation, but, having corrected for that, we observed significant effects of both plant and soil treatments on microbial composition. Separate phyla were associated with each treatment type, and no interactions between soil and plant treatment were observed. Individual soil characteristics and biotic parameters were also associated with overall beta‐diversity patterns and phyla abundance. In contrast, soil microbial diversity was only associated with site and not experimental treatment. Overall, plant community treatment explained more variation than soil treatment, a result not previously appreciated because it is difficult to dissociate plant community composition and soil conditions in observational studies across gradients. This work highlights the need for more nuanced, multifactorial experiments in microbial ecology and in particular indicates a greater focus on relationships between plant composition and microbial composition during community assembly.
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spelling pubmed-57733022018-01-26 Plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms Reese, Aspen T. Lulow, Kyrstin David, Lawrence A. Wright, Justin P. Ecol Evol Original Research Soils harbor large, diverse microbial communities critical for local and global ecosystem functioning that are controlled by multiple and poorly understood processes. In particular, while there is observational evidence of relationships between both biotic and abiotic conditions and microbial composition and diversity, there have been few experimental tests to determine the relative importance of these two sets of factors at local scales. Here, we report the results of a fully factorial experiment manipulating soil conditions and plant cover on old‐field mesocosms across a latitudinal gradient. The largest contributor to beta diversity was site‐to‐site variation, but, having corrected for that, we observed significant effects of both plant and soil treatments on microbial composition. Separate phyla were associated with each treatment type, and no interactions between soil and plant treatment were observed. Individual soil characteristics and biotic parameters were also associated with overall beta‐diversity patterns and phyla abundance. In contrast, soil microbial diversity was only associated with site and not experimental treatment. Overall, plant community treatment explained more variation than soil treatment, a result not previously appreciated because it is difficult to dissociate plant community composition and soil conditions in observational studies across gradients. This work highlights the need for more nuanced, multifactorial experiments in microbial ecology and in particular indicates a greater focus on relationships between plant composition and microbial composition during community assembly. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017-12-20 /pmc/articles/PMC5773302/ /pubmed/29375790 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.3734 Text en © 2017 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Reese, Aspen T.
Lulow, Kyrstin
David, Lawrence A.
Wright, Justin P.
Plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms
title Plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms
title_full Plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms
title_fullStr Plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms
title_full_unstemmed Plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms
title_short Plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms
title_sort plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5773302/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29375790
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.3734
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