Biogeographic patterns reveal the extensive adaptation of forest soil myxobacteria along environmental gradients

Abstract

Microbial responses to environmental gradients are often evaluated at community level, where bacterial communities are treated as a metaorganism. Considering that tolerance to physicochemical factors is an attribute of microbial lineages and functional groups, it seems necessary to figure out how well each taxon’s adaptation and sensitivity to different environments, especially for the prediction model of microbial response to climate change. Here, we reported the response of the soil predator myxobacteria, a group of bacteria cooperating and communicating to form multicellular structures and performing complex behaviors to prey on other microorganisms, across different forest soil by a comprehensive meta-analysis. The results showed that myxobacteria frequently occurred in forest soils. Soil properties explained a larger fraction of community variation (11.10%) than climatic factors (10.20%) and geographic variables (4.91%). The myxobacterial community showed a lower rate of species turnover than that of the whole bacterial community, and the proportions of both general and core myxobacteria in forest soil were higher than those of bacteria. Furthermore, the niche breadth of myxobacteria was wider than that of other micro-predators and common bacterial guilds inhabiting forest soil, providing statistical evidence for their potentially extensive environmental adaptation. This study provided robust statistical evidence for wider ranges of environmental breadths of myxobacteria and indicated the need to discriminate different taxa in predicting microbial responses to environmental gradients.

Keywords

• Myxobacteria
• Forest soil
• Geographic distance
• Climate variable
• Soil property
• Ecological niche breadth