{"doi":"10.1099/mgen.0.001344","title":"An ecological-evolutionary perspective on the genomic diversity and habitat preferences of the Acidobacteriota","abstract":"Members of the phylum Acidobacteriota inhabit a wide range of ecosystems including soils. We analysed the global patterns of distribution and habitat preferences of various Acidobacteriota lineages across major ecosystems (soil, engineered, host-associated, marine, non-marine saline and alkaline and terrestrial non-soil ecosystems) in 248 559 publicly available metagenomic datasets. Classes Terriglobia , Vicinamibacteria , Blastocatellia and Thermoanaerobaculia were highly ubiquitous and showed a clear preference to soil over non-soil habitats, while classes Aminicenantia and Holophagae showed preferences to non-soil habitats. However, while specific preferences were observed, most Acidobacteriota lineages were habitat generalists rather than specialists, with genomic and/or metagenomic fragments recovered from soil and non-soil habitats at various levels of taxonomic resolution. Comparative analysis of 1930 genomes strongly indicates that phylogenetic affiliation plays a more important role than the habitat from which the genome was recovered in shaping the genomic characteristics and metabolic capacities of the Acidobacteriota . The observed lack of strong habitat specialization and habitat-transition-driven lineage evolution in the Acidobacteriota suggest ready cross-colonization between soil and non-soil habitats. We posit that such capacity is key to the successful establishment of Acidobacteriota as a major component in soil microbiomes post-ecosystem disturbance events or during pedogenesis.","journal":"Microbial Genomics","year":2025,"id":516398,"datarank":0.4198645813008125,"base_score":2.302585092994046,"endowment":2.302585092994046,"self_citation_contribution":0.3453877639491069,"citation_network_contribution":0.07447681735170561,"self_endowment_contribution":0.3453877639491069,"citer_contribution":0.07447681735170561,"corpus_percentile":55.82114953198732,"corpus_rank":5712,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":9,"citers_with_citation_signal":4,"citers_with_endowment":4,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":true,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9246,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":899528,"name":"Mostafa S. Elshahed","orcid":"0000-0002-1067-1647","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":899529,"name":"Noha H. Youssef","orcid":"0000-0001-9159-3785","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1333655,"name":"Ella McReynolds","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":67,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:48:49.486328Z","pmid":"39879090","pmcid":"PMC11778308","fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}