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Why are some microbes more ubiquitous than others? Predicting the habitat breadth of soil bacteria
Author(s) -
Barberán Albert,
Ramirez Kelly S.,
Leff Jonathan W.,
Bradford Mark A.,
Wall Diana H.,
Fierer Noah
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
ecology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.852
H-Index - 265
eISSN - 1461-0248
pISSN - 1461-023X
DOI - 10.1111/ele.12282
Subject(s) - biology , trait , taxon , range (aeronautics) , ecology , habitat , taxonomic rank , phenotypic trait , phylogenetics , occupancy , evolutionary biology , phenotype , genetics , gene , materials science , computer science , composite material , programming language
Identifying the traits that determine spatial distributions can be challenging when studying organisms, like bacteria, for which phenotypic information is limited or non‐existent. However, genomic data provide another means to infer traits and determine the ecological attributes that account for differences in distributions. We determined the spatial distributions of ~124 000 soil bacterial taxa across a 3.41 km 2 area to determine whether we could use phylogeny and/or genomic traits to explain differences in habitat breadth. We found that occupancy was strongly correlated with environmental range; taxa that were more ubiquitous were found across a broader range of soil conditions. Across the ~500 taxa for which genomic information was available, genomic traits were more useful than phylogeny alone in explaining the variation in habitat breadth; bacteria with larger genomes and more metabolic versatility were more likely to have larger environmental and geographical distributions. Just as trait‐based approaches have proven to be so useful for understanding the distributions of animals and plants, we demonstrate that we can use genomic information to infer microbial traits that are difficult to measure directly and build trait‐based predictions of the biogeographical patterns exhibited by microbes.