Indeed, plant species exhibit a variety of root architectures, metabolism and growth strategies that affect the quality and quantity of soil organic matter through litter deposition and root exudation. Furthermore, the rhizosphere carbon flow provides high amounts of diverse organic substrates, and includes signal molecules that may regulate the population density of soil microbes. Because of the importance of mutualistic/ parasitic interactions described between plants and Verdinexor microbes and among microbial foodwebs, one may expect a strong effect of individual plant species on soil fungal, and bacterial community composition. This effect is, however, not always observed. Numerous studies have reported soil pH, and nutrients availability and quality as main drivers of soil microbial community composition. Both of these factors are known to be influenced by vegetation. Spatial covariation between plant community and microbial communities has been reported too. Most of these studies have failed to identify the relative contributions of soil properties, plant cover, and isolation by distance in the spatial patterning of soil microbes. Usually, investigations carried out on soil microbial biogeography focus on only one microbial domain. However, Bacteria, Archaea and Fungi are essential actors interacting in the soil food web, and their Ranirestat response to plant cover might differ. Indeed, some studies suggest that Fungi are more tightly associated with plants than prokaryotes, the latter being more influenced by soil properties. Furthermore, although many Fungi and Bacteria compete for the same resources, Fungi can degrade complex molecules from plant litter that are inaccessible for most bacteria. These apparent contrasting ecological requirements may affect beta diversity patterns of these two microbial domains. However, a comprehensive study examining this at the landscape scale has not been done so far. High-elevation environments provide a unique opportunity to assess the underlying factors of spatial patterning of microbial communities, as steep environmental gradients determine high turnover in plant species composition over short distances.