title: Changes in assembly processes in soil bacterial communities following a wildfire disturbance.
abstract: Although recent work has shown that both deterministic and stochastic processes are important in structuring microbial communities, the factors that affect the relative contributions of niche and neutral processes are poorly understood. The macrobiological literature indicates that ecological disturbances can influence assembly processes. Thus, we sampled bacterial communities at 4 and 16 weeks following a wildfire and used null deviation analysis to examine the role that time since disturbance has in community assembly. Fire dramatically altered bacterial community structure and diversity as well as soil chemistry for both time-points. Community structure shifted between 4 and 16 weeks for both burned and unburned communities. Community assembly in burned sites 4 weeks after fire was significantly more stochastic than in unburned sites. After 16 weeks, however, burned communities were significantly less stochastic than unburned communities. Thus, we propose a three-phase model featuring shifts in the relative importance of niche and neutral processes as a function of time since disturbance. Because neutral processes are characterized by a decoupling between environmental parameters and community structure, we hypothesize that a better understanding of community assembly may be important in determining where and when detailed studies of community composition are valuable for predicting ecosystem function.
authors: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0450, USA.
authors: Scott
authors: S
authors: Ferrenberg
authors: Sean P
authors: SP
authors: O'Neill
authors: Joseph E
authors: JE
authors: Knelman
authors: Bryan
authors: B
authors: Todd
authors: Sam
authors: S
authors: Duggan
authors: Daniel
authors: D
authors: Bradley
authors: Taylor
authors: T
authors: Robinson
authors: Steven K
authors: SK
authors: Schmidt
authors: Alan R
authors: AR
authors: Townsend
authors: Mark W
authors: MW
authors: Williams
authors: Cory C
authors: CC
authors: Cleveland
authors: Brett A
authors: BA
authors: Melbourne
authors: Lin
authors: L
authors: Jiang
authors: Diana R
authors: DR
authors: Nemergut
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics; D044822:Biodiversity; D017753:Ecosystem; D005390:Fires; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D012988:Soil Microbiology; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D014197:Trees / Q000382:microbiology
chemical_list: D012987:Soil