Soil Resources Influence Spatial Patterns of Denitrifying Communities at Scales Compatible with Land Management

Knowing spatial patterns of functional microbial guilds can increase our understanding of the relationships between microbial community ecology and ecosystem functions. Using geostatistical modeling to map spatial patterns, we explored the distribution of the community structure, size, and activity of one functional group in N cycling, the denitrifiers, in relation to 23 soil parameters over a 44-ha farm divided into one organic and one integrated crop production system. The denitrifiers were targeted by the nirS and nirK genes that encode the two mutually exclusive types of nitrite reductases, the cd₁ heme-type and copper reductases, respectively. The spatial pattern of the denitrification activity genes was reflected by the maps of the abundances of nir genes. For the community structure, only the maps of the nirS community were related to the activity. The activity was correlated with nitrate and dissolved organic nitrogen and carbon, whereas the gene pools for denitrification, in terms of size and composition, were influenced by the soil structure. For the nirS community, pH and soil nutrients were also important in shaping the community. The only unique parameter related to the nirK community was the soil Cu content. However, the spatial pattern of the nirK denitrifiers corresponded to the division of the farm into the two cropping systems. The different community patterns, together with the spatial distribution of the nirS/nirK abundance ratio, suggest habitat selection on the nirS- and nirK-type denitrifiers. Our findings constitute a first step in identifying niches for denitrifiers at scales relevant to land management.