Meta-scale mountain grassland observatories uncover commonalities as well as specific interactions among plant and non-rhizosphere soil bacterial communities

Interactions between plants and bacteria in the non-rhizosphere soil are rarely assessed, because they are less direct and easily masked by confounding environmental factors. By studying plant vegetation alliances and soil bacterial community co-patterning in grassland soils in 100 sites across a he...

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Published inScientific reports Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 5758 - 12
Main Authors Yashiro, Erika, Pinto-Figueroa, Eric, Buri, Aline, Spangenberg, Jorge E, Adatte, Thierry, Niculita-Hirzel, Helene, Guisan, Antoine, van der Meer, Jan Roelof
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Nature Publishing Group 10.04.2018
Nature Publishing Group UK
Subjects
Bacteria
Bacterial Physiological Phenomena
Biodiversity
Community composition
Environmental conditions
Environmental factors
Grassland
Grasslands
Plant Physiological Phenomena
Plants - microbiology
Rhizosphere
Soil
Soil Microbiology
Soil microorganisms
Soil pH
Vegetation
Vegetation surveys
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Summary:Interactions between plants and bacteria in the non-rhizosphere soil are rarely assessed, because they are less direct and easily masked by confounding environmental factors. By studying plant vegetation alliances and soil bacterial community co-patterning in grassland soils in 100 sites across a heterogeneous mountain landscape in the western Swiss Alps, we obtained sufficient statistical power to disentangle common co-occurrences and weaker specific interactions. Plant alliances and soil bacterial communities tended to be synchronized in community turnover across the landscape, largely driven by common underlying environmental factors, such as soil pH or elevation. Certain alliances occurring in distinct, local, environmental conditions were characterized by co-occurring specialist plant and bacterial species, such as the Nardus stricta and Thermogemmatisporaceae. In contrast, some generalist taxa, like Anthoxanthum odoratum and 19 Acidobacteria species, spanned across multiple vegetation alliances. Meta-scale analyses of soil bacterial community composition and vegetation surveys, complemented with local edaphic measurements, can thus prove useful to identify the various types of plant-bacteria interactions and the environments in which they occur.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-24253-x