Variations in Ecological Processes Influencing the Assembly of Bacterial Communities in Successional Environments

Abstract

Successional soil environments offer a model setting for understanding the ecological processes governing the assembly of microbial communities. As soil pH often changes during succession, this could be the main cause of the observed trends in bacterial community assembly and also influence the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes during succession. We tested this hypothesis by carrying out a meta-analysis of a range of different ecological successional environments with following question:

Is there a predictable change in bacterial community assembly process over successional time, regardless of differences in local environmental constraints (here soil pH)?