Background: Soil microbiomes are important to maintain soil processes in forests and confer protection to plants
against abiotic and biotic stresses. These microbiomes can be affected by environmental changes. In this work, soil
microbial communities from different cork oak Portuguese forests under different edaphoclimatic conditions were
described by using a metabarcoding strategy targeting ITS2 and 16S barcodes.
Results: A total of 11,974 fungal and 12,010 bacterial amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) were obtained, revealing
rich and diverse microbial communities associated with different cork oak forests. Bioclimate was described as the
major factor influencing variability in these communities (or bioclimates/cork oak forest for fungal community), followed
by boron and granulometry. Also, pH explained variation of fungal communities, while C:N ratio contributed
to bacterial variation. Fungal and bacterial biomarker genera for specific bioclimates were described. Their co-occurrence
network revealed the existence of a complex and delicate balance among microbial communities.
Conclusions: The findings revealed that bacterial communities are more likely to be affected by different edaphoclimatic
conditions than fungal communities, also predicting a higher impact of climate change on bacterial communities.
The integration of cork oak fungal and bacterial microbiota under different bioclimates could be further explored
to provide information about useful interactions for increasing cork oak forest sustainability in a world subject to
climate changes.
This work was supported by FEDER funds through COMPETE (Programa Operacional
Factores de Competitividade) and by national funds by FCT (Fundação
para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) in the framework of the project POCI-01-0145-
FEDER-028635, as well as for financial support to BioISI (UIDB/04046/2020),
CBMA (UIDB/04050/2020) and CIMO (UID/AGR/00690/2020) by national
funds by FCT/MCTES/PIDDAC. D. Costa thanks FCT for PhD grant SFRH/
BD/120516/2016 and COVID/BD/151779/2021.
