Taxonomic and functional dissimilarities of soil bacterial communities
are more related to environmental dissimilarity than geographic distance
Abstract
The processes governing soil bacteria biogeography are still not fully
understood. It remains unknown how the importance of environmental
filtering and dispersal differs between bacterial taxonomic and
functional biogeography, and whether their importance is
scale-dependent. We sampled soils at 195 plots across the Tibet plateau,
with distances among plots ranging from 20 m to 1 550 km. Taxonomic
composition of bacterial community was characterized by 16S amplicon
sequencing, and functional community composition by qPCR targeting 9
functional groups involved in N dynamics. Twelve climatic and soil
characteristics were also measured. Both taxonomic and functional
dissimilarities were more related to environmental dissimilarity than
geographic distance. Taxonomic dissimilarity was mostly explained by
soil pH and organic matter, while functional dissimilarity was mostly
linked to moisture, temperature and N, P and C availabilities. The roles
of environmental filtering and dispersal were, however, scale-dependent
and varied between taxonomic and functional dissimilarities, with
distance affecting taxonomic dissimilarity over short distances
(<~300 km) and functional dissimilarity over
long distances (>~600 km). The importance
of different environmental predictors varied across scales more for
functional than taxonomic dissimilarity. Our results demonstrate how
biodiversity dimension (taxonomic versus functional) and spatial scale
strongly influence the conclusions derived from bacterial biogeography
studies.