Arid areas of grasslands in the north: the relative importance of different processes is related to the pattern of bacterial diversity.

In the past few decades, the spatial pattern of microbial diversity has been extensively studied on a regional, continental and even global scale, and although there is ample evidence that most microbial species have bio-geographic patterns similar to those of large organisms, important ecological processes that drive microbial bio-geographic patterns need to be explored.
distance-decay pattern is one of the most common and important biodiversity patterns in nature, and because of its sensitivity to key ecological processes, it is an important means to verify ecological theory and structure.
It has been found that bacteria show significant distance-attenuation relationships at different habitat and species classification levels, and this pattern of diversity is generally attributed to two mechanisms, namely, determinism processes based on ecological position theory and random processes based on neutral theory.
Vellend proposed a new community ecology theory to explain biodiversity patterns in 2010, which argues that species diversity and composition patterns are mainly influenced by four processes (selection, dispersal, drift and speciation), which integrates previous theoretical models of community ecology research and attributes the formation of species diversity patterns to one or a combination of these four processes.
Based on this theoretical framework, Wang Xiaobo, Ph.D., Ecochemical Measurement Group, Shenyang Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, relied on an east-west sample belt survey of about 4000km in the arid area of grasslands in northern China, and systematically compared the four different habitat types covered by 545 sampling points (high cold) The distance-decay pattern of soil bacteria in grasslands, deserts, desert grasslands and typical grasslands (by 97% and 99% species classification criteria, respectively), and the differences in the relative contribution of geographical distance vs. environmental factors, explore the relationship between the relative importance of different processes and the pattern of bacterial diversity.
results show that: (1) both bacterial communities and major dominant groups show significant distance-attenuation relationships in their lifetimes, but the slope and constant of the distance-decay curve between habitats are different, and the bacterial beta diversity pattern and its geographical distance and the relative importance of environmental factors have obvious habitat specificity.
(2) the main advantage of bacteria is abundance and its distribution between different habitats also have significant differences.
(3) Habitat-specific bacterial diversity patterns and drivers persist even at similar habitat spatial scales.
(4) High-cold grassland bacteria have a high distance-attenuation rate, driven by strong environmental heterogeneity, and the selection process thus dominates the pattern of bacterial diversity;
the study, published online March 10 by researcher Han Xingguo, was published online by The ISME Journal, an international journal of microbiology, under the headline Habitat-specific patterns and drivers of the bacteria beta-diversity in China's drylands.
research work is mainly supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences pilot science and technology special (Class B) and the National Natural Science Foundation and other projects.
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