Change of rhizospheric bacterial community of the ancient wild tea along elevational gradients in Ailao mountain, China

The rhizospheric microbial community is one of the major environmental factors affecting the distribution and fitness of plants. Ancient wild tea plants are rare genetic resource distributed in Southwest China. In this study, we investigated that rhizospheric bacterial communities of ancient wild tea plants along the elevational gradients (2050, 2200, 2350 and 2500 m) in QianJiaZhai Reserve of Ailao Mountains. According to the Illumina MiSeq sequencing of 16 S rRNA gene amplicons, Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria and Actinobacteria were the dominant phyla with the relative abundance 43.12%, 21.61% and 14.84%, respectively. The Variibacter was the most dominant genus in rhizosphere of ancient wild tea plant. Phylogenetic null modeling analysis suggested that rhizospheric bacterial communities of ancient wild tea plants were more phylogenetically clustered than expected by chance. The bacterial community at 2050 m was unique with the highest alpha diversity, tend to cluster the nearest taxon and simple co-occurrence network structure. The unique bacterial community was correlated to multiple soil factors, and the content soil ammonium nitrogen (NH(4)(+)-N) was the key factor affecting the diversity and distribution of bacterial community along the elevational gradients. This study provided the necessary basic information for the protection of ancient tea trees and cultivation of tea plants.