Influence of Spatial Scale on Structure of Soil Bacterial Communities across an Arctic Landscape

Malard, Lucie, Anwar, Muhammad Zohaib, Jacobsen, Carsten S. and Pearce, David (2021) Influence of Spatial Scale on Structure of Soil Bacterial Communities across an Arctic Landscape. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 87 (5). e02220-20. ISSN 0099-2240

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Abstract

Bacterial community composition is largely influenced by environmental factors, and this applies to the Arctic region. However, little is known about the role of spatial factors in structuring such communities. In this study, we evaluated the influence of spatial scale on bacterial community structure across an Arctic landscape. Our results showed that spatial factors accounted for approximately 10% of the variation at the landscape scale, equivalent to observations across the whole Arctic region, suggesting that while the role and magnitude of other processes involved in community structure may vary, the role of dispersal may be stable globally in the region. We assessed dispersal limitation by identifying the spatial autocorrelation distance which would be required in order to obtain fully independent samples as approximately 60 m, and this may inform future sampling strategies in the region. Finally, indicator taxa with strong statistical correlations with environmental variables were identified. However, we showed that these strong taxon-environment associations may not always be reflected in the geographical distribution of these taxa.

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