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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Biogeographical design of soil microbial habitats

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International audience; Since the beginning of 21th century, soil microbial diversity is intensively studied gathering ahuge knowledge at local and global scales. Nevertheless, the microbial habitats have beenpoorly investigated, limiting our ability to link biodiversity description and regulation. In our study,we used a pyrosequencing approach targeting 16S rRNA genes directly amplified from soil DNAto have a comprehensive view of soil bacterial and archaeal community composition across thelargest spatially explicit soil sampling available in France (2173 soils, area covered = 5.5x105km2). Based on the multivariate regression tree (MRT) method, we designed 16 distinctterrestrial microbial habitats at the territory scale, delineated by the association of soil pH, C:Nratio, land use and minorly climatic conditions. The heterogeneous spatial distribution of habitatsdrew up a complex mosaic across France. As for plants and animals, each habitat hostsgeneralist and specialist taxa and a specific interaction network, directly or indirectly impacted bythe Human activities. Overall, our results stressed the importance of the integration of microbialhabitats for upgrading the biodiversity conservation policies in a context of global change