Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.08.04.234278v1?rss=1 Authors: Zhao, X.-F., Shu, W.-S., Hao, Y.-Q. Abstract: Ecological theory suggests that temporal environmental fluctuations can contribute greatly to diversity maintenance. Given bacteria's short generation time and rapid responses to the environmental change, seasonal climate fluctuations are very likely to play an important role in maintaining the extremely high -diversity of soil bacterial community, which has been unfortunately neglected in previous studies. Here, with in-depth analyses of two previously published high-quality soil bacterial datasets at global scale, we found that soil bacterial -diversity was positively correlated with both seasonal variations of temperature and precipitation. Furthermore, piecewise structural equation models showed that seasonal variations of temperature or precipitation directly promoted soil bacterial -diversity in each dataset. Our findings implied that fluctuation-dependent mechanisms of diversity maintenance presumably operate in soil bacterial communities and highlighted that both the average values and temporal variations of abiotic environmental factors should be considered when investigating soil bacterial community composition in the future. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info