Plant functional traits regulate soil bacterial diversity across temperate deserts.

Abstract

Despite the known influence of plant diversity on soil microbial diversity, the potential role of plant functional traits in regulating soil bacterial diversity remains largely unclear. There is a lack of strong empirical evidence for the relative effects of plant diversity and functional traits on soil bacterial diversity across large-scale deserts. Here, we simultaneously explore the internal links among plant diversity, functional traits and soil bacterial diversity across 90 temperate deserts habitat of China, after accounting for confounding abiotic and spatial factors. The results showed that soil bacterial alpha and beta diversities were mainly determined by abiotic and spatial factors, follow by plant factors. However, plant diversity and functional traits played diverse roles in shaping soil bacterial alpha and beta diversities. Plant diversity exerted a substantial influence on soil bacterial beta diversity, but not on alpha diversity. In contrast, plant functional traits still directly influenced soil bacterial alpha and beta diversity, after accounting for other confounding key drivers. More precisely, plant functional traits surpass plant diversity in affecting soil bacterial alpha diversity. These results provide robust evidence that plant functional traits can effectively regulate soil bacterial diversity across temperate deserts. Taken together, we highlight the importance and irreplaceability of plant functional traits in predicting soil biodiversity under current and future global environmental changes.