The subcommunity assembly mechanisms of different soil microbial taxa Raw sequence reads
Revealing the mechanisms of soil microbial community assembly is a central goal in microbial ecology and biogeography. However, as most research concerns the assembly mechanisms of the overall soil microbial community, the subcommunity assembly mechanisms of different microbial lineages remain poorly understood. Soil samples were collected from more than 100 sites across Yunnan Province, a region with highly diverse climates and complex topography. Based on amplification high-throughput sequencing and the iCAMP algorithm, the subcommunity assembly mechanisms of different microbial taxa were revealed. Dispersal limitation and homogenous selection were the main drivers of soil microbial community assembly in this region. However, the subcommunity assembly mechanisms of different soil microbial taxa were highly variable. For instance, the contribution of homogenous selection to Crenarchaeota subcommunity assembly was 70%, but it was only approximately 10% for the subcommunity assembly of Actinomycetes, Gemmatimonadetes, and Planctomycetes. The assembly mechanisms of different subcommunities were closely related to the niche breadth, relative abundance, occurrence frequency, and network degree of the corresponding microbial taxa. The assembly of microbial subcommunities with a higher occurrence frequency, relative abundance, and network degree and a wider niche was more likely to be controlled by homogenizing dispersal and drift but less affected by heterogeneous selection and dispersal limitation. These findings provide critical and novel insights into soil microbial community assembly mechanisms.