Coupling Bacterial Community Assembly to Microbial Metabolism across Soil Profiles
Lu Luan, Chao Liang, Lijun Chen, Haotian Wang, Qinsong Xu, Yuji Jiang, Bo Sun
Abstract
We have provided a framework to better understand the mechanisms governing the balance between stochastic and deterministic processes and to integrate the shifts in community assembly processes with microbial carbon metabolism. Our study reinforced that environmental filtering and bacterial cooccurrence patterns influence the stochastic/deterministic continuum of soil bacterial community assembly and that stochasticity may act through deeper soil layers to influence carbon metabolism. Delineating theoretically the potential linkages between community assembly and SOC dynamics across a broad range of microbial systems represents an interesting topic for future research.