ABSTRACT
Dispersal limitation in phyllosphere communities was measured on the leaf surfaces of salt-excreting Tamarix trees, which offer unique, discrete habitats for microbial assemblages. We employed 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing to measure bacterial community dissimilarity on leaves of spatially dispersed Tamarix specimens in sites with uniform climatic conditions across the Sonoran Desert in the Southwestern United States. Our analyses revealed diverse bacterial communities with four dominant phyla that exhibited differential effects of environmental and geographic variables. Geographical distance was the most important parameter that affected community composition, particularly that of betaproteobacteria, which displayed a statistically significant, distance-decay relationship.
FOOTNOTES
- Received 22 March 2012.
- Accepted 20 June 2012.
- Accepted manuscript posted online 20 June 2012.
Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/AEM.00888-12.
- Copyright © 2012, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.