Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33888877›Full record

ArticleNature ecology & evolution2021

Soil microbiome predictability increases with spatial and taxonomic scale.

Colin Averill, Zoey R Werbin, Kathryn F Atherton, Jennifer M Bhatnagar, Michael C Dietze

Abstract read
PubMed Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
20citing papers in PubMed
6.6field-weighted citation impact, top 3% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

20 citing papers in PubMed, 58 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Microbial biotechnology meets ecological theory: a unified framework to design industrial microbial consortia.International microbiology : the official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology · 2026
    Review
  2. Article
  3. Review
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Review
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Review
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Review
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.

Colin AverillDepartment of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA. colin.averill@usys.ethz.ch.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4035-7760
Zoey R WerbinDepartment of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
Kathryn F AthertonDepartment of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2175-8331
Jennifer M BhatnagarDepartment of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
Michael C DietzeDepartment of Earth & Environment, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
Boston University · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Soil microorganisms shape ecosystem function, yet it remains an open question whether we can predict the composition of the soil microbiome in places before observing it. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the predictability of microbial life exhibits taxonomic- and spatial-scale dependence, as it does for macrobiological communities. Here, we leverage multiple large-scale soil microbiome surveys to develop predictive models of bacterial and fungal community composition in soil, then test these models against independent soil microbial community surveys from across the continental United States. We find remarkable scale dependence in community predictability. The predictability of bacterial and fungal communities increases with the spatial scale of observation, and fungal predictability increases with taxonomic scale. These patterns suggest that there is an increasing importance of deterministic versus stochastic processes with scale, consistent with findings in plant and animal communities, suggesting a general scaling relationship across biology. Biogeochemical functional groups and high-level taxonomic groups of microorganisms were equally predictable, indicating that traits and taxonomy are both powerful lenses for understanding soil communities. By focusing on out-of-sample prediction, these findings suggest an emerging generality in our understanding of the soil microbiome, and that this understanding is fundamentally scale dependent.

Indexed as

MicrobiotaSoilBacteriaFungiSoil MicrobiologySoil

Identifiers

PMID33888877
OpenAlexW3154720376

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.