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Elevation gradients could provide natural experiments to examine geomorphological influences on biota ecology and evolution, however little is known about microbial community structures with soil depths along altitudinal gradients in karst graben basin of Yunnan-Kweichow Plateau. Here, bulk soil in A layer (0 ~ 10 cm) and B layer (10 ~ 20 cm) from two transect Mounts were analyzed by using high-throughput sequencing coupled with physicochemical analysis. It was found that the top five phyla in A layer were Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Verrucomicrobia, and the top five phyla in B layer were Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, and Chloroflexi in a near-neutral environment. Edaphic parameters were different in two layers along altitudinal gradients. Besides that, soil microbial community compositions varied along altitudinal gradient, and soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) increased monotonically with increasing elevation. It was further observed that Shannon indexes with increasing altitudes in two transect Mounts decreased monotonically with significant difference (p = 0.001), however beta diversity followed U-trend with significant difference (p = 0.001). The low proportions of unique operational taxonomic units (OTUs) appeared at high altitude areas which impact the widely accepted elevation Rapoport’s rules. The dominant Bradyrhizobium (alphaproteobacterial OTU 1) identified at high altitudes in two layers constitutes the important group of free-living diazotrophs and could bring fixed N into soils, which simultaneously enhances SOC and TN accumulation at high altitudes (p |
