Data from: Cross-biome metagenomic analyses of soil microbial communities and their functional attributes ...

• Main Authors: Fierer, Noah, Leff, Jonathan W., Adams, Byron J., Nielsen, Uffe N., Bates, Scott Thomas, Lauber, Christian L., Owens, Sarah, Gilbert, Jack A., Wall, Diana H., Caporaso, J. Gregory
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2013
• Subjects: soil microbial ecology; shotgun metagenomics; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q2n78; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.q2n78

For centuries ecologists have studied how the diversity and functional traits of plant and animal communities vary across biomes. In contrast, we have only just begun exploring similar questions for soil microbial communities despite soil microbes being the dominant engines of biogeochemical cycles and a major pool of living biomass in terrestrial ecosystems. We used metagenomic sequencing to compare the composition and functional attributes of 16 soil microbial communities collected from cold deserts, hot deserts, forests, grasslands, and tundra. Those communities found in plant-free cold desert soils typically had the lowest levels of functional diversity (diversity of protein-coding gene categories) and the lowest levels of phylogenetic and taxonomic diversity. Across all soils, functional beta diversity was strongly correlated with taxonomic and phylogenetic beta diversity; the desert microbial communities were clearly distinct from the nondesert communities regardless of the metric used. The desert ... : 16S_rRNA_sequences_for_16_soilsThese sequences were demultiplexed using the 'split_libraries_fastq.py' command in QIIME v1.6.0 with default settings.seqs_16_soils.fna.gz16_soils_metadataSoil and site characteristics for the 16 soils ...