55 Spatial scale affects the relative role of stoc

55 Spatial scale affects the relative role of stochasticity versus determinism in soil bacterial communities in wheat fields across the North China Plain.RESEARCHOpenAccessSpatialscaleaffectstherelativeroleofstochasticityversusdeterminisminsoilbacterialcommunitiesinwheatfieldsacrosstheNorthChinaPlainYuShi1†,YuntaoLi1†,XingjiaXiang1,RuiboSun1,TengYang1,DanHe1,KaopingZhang1,YingyingNi1,Yong-GuanZhu2,JonathanM.Adams3andHaiyanChu1*AbstractBackground:Therelativeimportanceofstochasticityversusdeterminisminsoilbacterialcommunitiesisunclear,asarethepossibleinfluencesthatalterthebalancebetweenthese.Here,weinvestigatedtheinfluenceofspatialscaleontherelativeroleofstochasticityanddeterminisminagriculturalmonoculturesconsistingonlyofwheat,therebyminimizingtheinfluenceofdifferencesinplantspeciescoverandincultivation/disturbanceregime,extendingacrossawiderangeofsoilsandclimatesoftheNorthChinaPlain(NCP).Wesampled243sitesacross1092kmandsequencedthe16SrRNAbacterialgeneusingMiSeq.Wehypothesizedthatdeterm