Abstract
Interactions between plants and bacteria in the non-rhizosphere soil are rarely assessed, because they are less direct and easily masked by confounding environmental factors. By studying plant vegetation alliances and soil bacterial community co-patterning in grassland soils in 100 sites across a heterogeneous mountain landscape in the western Swiss Alps, we obtained sufficient statistical power to disentangle common co-occurrences and weaker specific interactions. Plant alliances and soil bacterial communities tended to be synchronized in community turnover across the landscape, largely driven by common underlying environmental factors, such as soil pH or elevation. Certain alliances occurring in distinct, local, environmental conditions were characterized by co-occurring specialist plant and bacterial species, such as the Nardus stricta and Thermogemmatisporaceae. In contrast, some generalist taxa, like Anthoxanthum odoratum and 19 Acidobacteria species, spanned across multiple vegetation alliances. Meta-scale analyses of soil bacterial community composition and vegetation surveys, complemented with local edaphic measurements, can thus prove useful to identify the various types of plant-bacteria interactions and the environments in which they occur.
Highlights
Plant and soil bacterial communities are intimately related, with notable implications for ecosystem productivity, functioning and global change[1,2,3,4]
We examined global co-variation of non-rhizosphere grassland soil bacterial communities and aboveground plant cover, across 100 sites in the Western Swiss Alps region
In this study we identified both commonalities and specific interactions between bacterial and plant communities across 100 sites and 15 distinct grassland plant alliances in the western Swiss Alps
Summary
Plant and soil bacterial communities are intimately related, with notable implications for ecosystem productivity, functioning and global change[1,2,3,4]. Since soil types differ across the landscape, one would expect that plants at different sites enrich their root communities from whatever bulk soil community is available locally, possibly favoring specific plant-bacteria interactions as a function of site characteristics and the native resident microbial community. For example, focus on specific highly abundant plant species that co-occur with abundant bacterial groups, or compare plant vegetation types with bacterial community “types” at a “meta” level. Since both plants and bacteria are influenced by environmental factors, it is difficult to tease apart co-occurrences that are the result of biotic interactions from those resulting from similar influence of environmental factors[29]. Using joint observations of plants and bacteria at a series of locations across a mountain landscape, one can test for general co-patterning between plant and bacterial communities, as well as identify individual plant species and bacterial groups exhibiting more specific co-occurrences
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
