Bacterial community response to a preindustrial‐to‐future CO2 gradient is limited and soil specific in Texas Prairie grassland

Rising atmospheric CO2 concentration directly stimulates plant productivity and affects nutrient dynamics in the soil. However, the influence of CO2 enrichment on soil bacterial communities remains elusive, likely due to their complex interactions with a wide range of plant and soil properties. Here, we investigated the bacterial community response to a decade long preindustrial‐to‐future CO2 gradient (250–500 ppm) among three contrasting soil types using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. In addition, we examined the effect of seasonal variation and plant species composition on bacterial communities. We found that Shannon index (H’) and Faith's phylogenetic diversity (PD) did not change in response to the CO2 gradient (R2 = 0.01, p > 0.05). CO2 gradient and season also had a negligible effect on overall community structure, although silty clay soil communities were better structured on a CO2 gradient (p