Microbes do not follow the elevational diversity patterns of plants and animals

Fierer, Noah; McCain, Christy M.; Meir, Patrick; Zimmermann, Michael; Rapp, Joshua M.; Silman, Miles R.; Knight, Rob

doi:10.1890/10-1170.1

Cited by 352 publications

(300 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…However, we do acknowledge that microbial diversity was also related to abundance and we therefore cannot exclude different growth rates, for instance, contributing to the biodiversity patterns. Several studies have predicted how microbial community composition may vary with altitude, but the relationship between microbial diversity and altitude remains debated (Bryant et al, 2008;Fierer et al, 2011). Our findings on functional traits and diversity shed new light on this relationship for stream biofilms.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Altitudinal patterns of diversity and functional traits of metabolically active microorganisms in stream biofilms

et al. 2015

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Resources structure ecological communities and potentially link biodiversity to energy flow. It is commonly believed that functional traits (generalists versus specialists) involved in the exploitation of resources depend on resource availability and environmental fluctuations. The longitudinal nature of stream ecosystems provides changing resources to stream biota with yet unknown effects on microbial functional traits and community structure. We investigated the impact of autochthonous (algal extract) and allochthonous (spruce extract) resources, as they change along alpine streams from above to below the treeline, on microbial diversity, community composition and functions of benthic biofilms. Combining bromodeoxyuridine labelling and 454 pyrosequencing, we showed that diversity was lower upstream than downstream of the treeline and that community composition changed along the altitudinal gradient. We also found that, especially for allochthonous resources, specialisation by biofilm bacteria increased along that same gradient. Our results suggest that in streams below the treeline biofilm diversity, specialisation and functioning are associated with increasing niche differentiation as potentially modulated by divers allochthonous and autochthonous constituents contributing to resources. These findings expand our current understanding on biofilm structure and function in alpine streams.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Altitudinal patterns of diversity and functional traits of metabolically active microorganisms in stream biofilms

et al. 2015

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“…In this survey, Bryant et al found that soil Acidobacteria exhibited a declining pattern of phylogenetic diversity with increasing altitude, whereas Angiosperm showed a typical unimodal pattern. Another comparative study between the diversity patterns of macroorganism and microorganism along an elevational gradient from 200 to 3,450 m in the eastern Peru montane areas observed no clear pattern for the bacterial diversity, whereas plants and animals exhibited a significant pattern of decline [11]. In addition, a significant unimodal pattern of soil bacterial diversity along an elevational gradient was reported on the Mt.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Comparative studies are common in biogeography; however, most of microbial biogeographic studies have focused merely on bacteria [11] or archaea [16]. In fact, both bacteria and archaea have been found to be remarkably abundant and functionally important in terrestrial ecosystems, and could contribute differently to ecosystem functioning and biogeochemical cycling [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altitudinal Distribution Patterns of Soil Bacterial and Archaeal Communities Along Mt. Shegyla on the Tibetan Plateau

et al. 2014

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Unraveling the distribution patterns of plants and animals along the elevational gradients has been attracting growing scientific interests of ecologists, whether the microbial communities exhibit similar elevational patterns, however, remains largely less documented. Here, we investigate the biogeographic distribution of soil archaeal and bacterial communities across three vertical climate zones (3,106-4,479 m.a.s.l.) in Mt. Shegyla on the Tibetan Plateau, by combining quantitative PCR and high-throughput barcoded pyrosequencing approaches. Our results found that the ratio of bacterial to archaeal 16S rRNA gene abundance was negatively related with elevation. Acidobacteria dominated in the bacterial communities, Marine benthic group A dominated in the archaeal communities, and the relative abundance of both taxa changed significantly with elevation. At the taxonomic levels of domain, phylum, and class, more bacterial taxa than archaeal exhibited declining trend in diversity along the increasing elevational gradient, as revealed by Shannon and Faith's phylogenetic diversity indices. Unweighted UniFrac distance clustering showed that the bacterial communities from the mountainous temperate zone clustered together, whereas those from the subalpine cool temperate zone clustered together. However, the partitioning effect of elevational zones on the archaeal community was much weaker compared to that on bacteria. Redundancy analysis revealed that soil geochemical factors explained 58.3 % of the bacterial community variance and 75.4 % of the archaeal community variance. Taken together, we provide evidence that soil bacteria exhibited more apparent elevational zonation feature and decreased diversity pattern than archaea with increasing elevation, and distribution patterns of soil microbes are strongly regulated by soil properties along elevational gradient in this plateau montane ecosystem.

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“…Many studies have investigated the elevation gradients of soil MB at sites below 3000 m (Arunachalam and Pandey, 2003;Djukic et al, 2010;Fierer et al, 2011). These studies conducted on Mt.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial variability of soil microbial biomass and its relationships with edaphic, vegetational and climatic factors in the Three-River Headwaters region on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Shen

et al. 2015

Applied Soil Ecology

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a b s t r a c tThis study aims to investigate the level of soil microbial biomass (MB) and analyze the relationships between soil MB and edaphic, vegetational and climatic factors at high elevation sites (>3000 m). We collected soil samples from 0 to 10 cm soil depth in 259 plots at 55 sites across 6 biomes in Three-River Headwaters (TRH) region at 3280-5127 m elevation. Soil microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen (MBC and MBN) were measured with the chloroform fumigation-extraction method. Multivariate stepwise regression analyses were used to analyze the combined effects of edaphic, vegetational and climatic factors on soil MB. We found: (1) soil MBC and MBN had an average of 30.95 mmol C/kg dry soil and 5.84 mmol N/kg dry soil in TRH, respectively, and their values were found to be negatively correlated with elevation; (2) soil MB was found to be significantly different among different biomes, and this spatial variation could be explained by the levels of soil organic carbon and belowground plant biomass. Our results indicate that the MB at high elevation region might be very low, and the increasing trend of soil microbial biomass with elevation could reverse at higher elevations.

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Microbes do not follow the elevational diversity patterns of plants and animals

Cited by 352 publications

References 45 publications

Altitudinal patterns of diversity and functional traits of metabolically active microorganisms in stream biofilms

Altitudinal patterns of diversity and functional traits of metabolically active microorganisms in stream biofilms

Altitudinal Distribution Patterns of Soil Bacterial and Archaeal Communities Along Mt. Shegyla on the Tibetan Plateau

Spatial variability of soil microbial biomass and its relationships with edaphic, vegetational and climatic factors in the Three-River Headwaters region on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

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