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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 8, 2025

Isolation and Analysis of Microbial Communities in Soil, Rhizosphere, and Roots in Perennial Grass Experiments

Isolation and Analysis of Microbial Communities in Soil, Rhizosphere, and Roots in Perennial Grass Experiments

Published on: July 24, 2018

Soil microbiome predictability increases with spatial and taxonomic scale.

Colin Averill^1,2,3, Zoey R Werbin^4,5, Kathryn F Atherton^4,6

¹Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA. colin.averill@usys.ethz.ch.

Nature Ecology & Evolution

|April 23, 2021

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Predicting soil microbiome composition is possible and improves with observation scale. Bacterial and fungal communities show scale-dependent predictability, suggesting general biological scaling laws.

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Microbiology
Soil Science

Background:

Soil microorganisms are crucial for ecosystem functions.
Predicting soil microbiome composition across locations remains a challenge.
Understanding scale-dependent predictability in microbial communities is key.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop and test predictive models for soil bacterial and fungal community composition.
To investigate the influence of spatial and taxonomic scales on microbiome predictability.
To explore general scaling relationships in biological communities.

Main Methods:

Utilized multiple large-scale soil microbiome surveys.
Developed predictive models for bacterial and fungal community composition.
Validated models against independent soil microbial community data from the continental US.

Main Results:

Community predictability significantly depends on the scale of observation.
Predictability of bacterial and fungal communities increases with spatial scale.
Fungal community predictability also increases with taxonomic scale.

Conclusions:

Deterministic processes become more influential at larger scales, similar to macrobiology.
Biogeochemical functional groups and high-level taxa are equally predictable.
Soil microbiome understanding is fundamentally scale-dependent, with emerging generalities.