Dryad
Published August 30, 2023 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Consistent predictors of microbial community composition across spatial scales in grasslands reveal low context-dependency

Creators

  • 1. University of Antwerp
  • 2. University of Pretoria
  • 3. University of Minnesota
  • 4. University of South Africa
  • 5. University of Bayreuth
  • 6. United States Department of Agriculture
  • 7. University of Alberta
  • 8. University of Greifswald
  • 9. University of Tehran
  • 10. Institute of Ecology and Botany
  • 11. Agriculture and Agriculture-Food Canada
  • 12. University of Camerino
  • 13. National University of Córdoba
  • 14. Thompson Rivers University
  • 15. Western University
  • 16. Szent István University
  • 17. Islamic Azad University, Tehran
  • 18. University of Rostock
  • 19. University of Otago
  • 20. Inner Mongolia University
  • 21. University of Florida
  • 22. Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences*

Description

Environmental circumstances shaping soil microbial communities have been studied extensively. However, due to disparate study designs, it has been difficult to resolve whether a globally consistent set of predictors exists, or context-dependency prevails. Here, we used a network of 18 grassland sites (11 of those containing regional plant productivity gradients) to examine i) if similar abiotic or biotic factors predict both large-scale (across sites) and regional-scale (within sites) patterns in bacterial and fungal community composition, and ii) if microbial community composition differs consistently at two levels of regional plant productivity (low vs high). We found that bacteria were consistently associated with certain soil properties and both bacteria and fungi were consistently associated with plant community composition within different sites. Moreover, there was a microbial community signal that clearly distinguished high and low-productivity soils that was shared across different grasslands independent of their location in the world. In this study, we show that there is high congruence between predictors of bacterial and fungal community composition at different spatial scales and that regional productivity differences are typified by characteristic soil microbial communities across the grassland biome. These results suggest that it might be feasible to predict the overall effects of global changes on soil microbial community composition in different grasslands, as well as to discriminate fertile from infertile systems using generally applicable microbial indicators.

Notes

Funding provided by: Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003130
Award Number:

Funding provided by: European Research Council
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781
Award Number: ERC-SyG-610028 IMBALANCE-P

Funding provided by: Methusalem funding *
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number:

Funding provided by: GINOP project*
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number: 2.3.2-15-2016-00019

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Additional details

Related works

Is cited by
10.1101/2021.11.29.470306 (DOI)