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.