Soil Microbial Community in 47 Chinese Forest Sites: Biogeographic Patterns and Links With Soil Dissolved Organic Matter

Soils in forested ecosystems are extremely heterogeneous and represent a critical component of terrestrial ecosystems. Despite their substantial ecological value, the geographic characteristics, ecological processes, and coexistence of microbial communities in forest soils remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated the biodiversity dynamics, environmental influences, community assembly, and co-occurrence patterns of bacterial and fungal communities in surface and subsurface soils across 47 Chinese forest sites. The biogeographic characteristics determined using high-throughput sequencing data sets revealed evident spatial patterns of bacterial and fungal α and β diversity, assembly processes, and co-occurrence relationship, with greater variation in the bacterial than in fungal communities. Both fungal and bacterial communities showed significant spatial separations regulated by community assembly processes, co-occurrence patterns, and soil variables. The microbial dissimilarity was lower in high latitudes than in low latitudes, which was consistent with the lower deterministic processes and relatively higher co-occurrence associations in high latitudes than in low latitudes. Additionally, there were significant associations of soil dissolved organic matter (DOM) characteristics (e.g., its content, aromaticity, and molecular weight) with biodiversity dissimilarities, microbial assembly process balances, and microbial co-occurrence relationships in bacterial and fungal communities; they clearly indicate the key role of DOM in regulating microbial biogeographic patterns in forest soil ecosystems. Collectively, our study enhances the understanding of biogeographic patterns and coexistence theories in forest soil microbial ecosystems.