Abstract
The interplay between plants and soil drives the structure and function of soil microbial communities. In water-limited environments where vascular plants are often absent and only specialized groups of rootless plants grow, this interaction could be mainly asymmetric, with plants supporting nutrients and resources via litter deposition. In this study, we use observational approaches to evaluate the impact of local distribution of Tillandsia landbeckii across elevation on soil bacterial community structure and composition in the Atacama Fog Desert. Tillandsia landbeckii is a plant without functional roots that develops on meter-scale sand dunes and depends mainly on marine fog that transports resources (water and nutrients) from the Pacific Ocean. Our data show that soil bacterial abundance, richness, and diversity were significantly higher beneath T. landbeckii plants relative to bare soils. However, these differences were not significant across T. landbeckii located at different elevations and with different input of marine fog. On the other hand, bacterial community composition was significantly different with T. landbeckii plants across elevations. Further, samples beneath T. landbeckii and bare soils showed significant differences in bacterial community composition. Around 99% of all operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were recorded exclusively beneath T. landbeckii, and only 1% of OTUs were observed in bare soils. These findings suggest that the presence of T. landbeckii promotes significant increases in bacterial abundance and diversity compared with bare soils, although we fail to demonstrate that local-scale changes in elevation can affect patterns of soil bacterial diversity and abundance beneath T. landbeckii.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by FONDECYT 11180538, Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID), Chile and the Start-Up grants of the Vicerrectoría de Investigación (VRI), Universidad Mayor, Chile. F.D.A and S.A. were supported by FONDECYT 1170995. We thank Centro UC Desierto de Atacama for logistic and technical support.
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FDA conceived the project and the experiments. FDA and CV conducted the sampling, MM and CA analyzed soil samples, JLG, PO, CDR, CL, and MAK assisted with data analysis and site information, and FDA and SA drafted the manuscript. All authors contributed to the final manuscript draft.
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Online Resource 1. Elevational distribution of Tillandsia landbeckii bands along the Oyarbide field.
Online Resource 2. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression for assessing the effect of change in band and inter-band elevation on soil features and bacterial diversity beneath Tillandsia landbeckii and bare soils across the elevation gradient in the Oyarbide field.
Online Resource 3. Rarefaction curves of observed OTUs of soil bacterial communities beneath Tillandsia landbeckii and bare soils across the elevation gradient in the Oyarbide field.
Online Resource 4. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression for assess the effect of change in elevation on soil bacterial diversity (at phylum level) beneath Tillandsia landbeckii and bare soils across the elevation gradient in the Oyarbide field.
Online Resource 5. Phyla relative abundance in soils beneath Tillandsia landbeckii across the elevation gradient in the Oyarbide field.
Online Resource 6. Mantel and Partial Mantel test of bacterial community composition and geographic distance corrected by changes in soil TC across different elevations in the Oyarbide field.
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Alfaro, F.D., Manzano, M., Almiray, C. et al. Soil bacterial community structure of fog‐dependent Tillandsia landbeckii dunes in the Atacama Desert. Plant Syst Evol 307, 56 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-021-01781-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-021-01781-0