Soil Bacterial Diversity Increases with Spring Ephemeral Diversity in Soil Bacterial Communities Structured by Slope Type and Season on White Oak Mountain in Tennessee.

Soil microbial communities have essential roles in terrestrial biomes, performing numerous key ecosystem processes, including nutrient acquisition; carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling; and soil formation. The ability of soil microbial communities to provide these ecosystem processes depends on the microbial community's structure and diversity. The plant communities, seasonal changes, and microclimate can all alter the structure and diversity of soil microbial communities. While the structuring effect of tree and shrub communities in temperate deciduous forests on soil microbial communities is well-documented, little is known about the influence of spring ephemerals, another crucial component of temperate deciduous forests, on soil microbial community diversity and structure. Consequently, this study examines how spring ephemeral diversity, season, and microclimate, as indicated by slope type, structures the soil microbial community diversity and composition of the second-growth oak-hickory forests on White Oak Mountain in Southeast Tennessee. The soil microbial community was characterized by 16S/18S/ITS rDNA amplicon sequencing of total DNA extracted from soil samples normalized for each of the ten sample plots. The results from these experiments demonstrated that the bacterial community of White Oak Mountain is structured by both slope type and season and that bacterial but not fungal diversity has a significant positive relationship with spring ephemeral diversity. In addition, these experiments resulted in the first characterization of the soil bacterial and fungal community of White Oak Mountain, Tennessee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]