3.3 Linking environmental heterogeneity with microbial
spatial scaling patterns
Environmental heterogeneity could be an important factor responsible for
the spatial scaling patterns of biological communities. Therefore, we
first investigated whether and how environmental heterogeneity was
associated with microbial spatial scaling patterns. For each sample
pair, the Euclidean distance was calculated based on a set of 19
environmental factors and used as environmental heterogeneity. For
bacterial communities, significant associations were observed between
environmental heterogeneity and microbial spatial scaling metrics,
except for abundant subcommunities (Fig. 3a and b). Rare subcommunities
were found with stronger association with environmental heterogeneity
than abundant subcommunities (Fig. 3a and b), suggesting that
environmental heterogeneity more influenced rare subcommunities.
Additionally, weak association was observed between environmental
heterogeneity and geographic distance (Supplementary Figure 3). The
results suggested that environmental heterogeneity played important
roles in driving the spatial scaling patterns of sedimental microbial
communities via rare subcommunities.