Objective  We aimed to explore the distribution characteristics of forest soil bacterial communities in different elevations (900−1500 m) in Daiyun Mountain, Fujian Province of eastern China.

  Method  We used high-throughput sequencing to study the composition and diversity of soil bacterial communities at different elevations, and analyzed the effect of environmental factors on soil dominant bacterial communities.

  Result  (1) With the increasing of elevation, the content of soil total phosphorus showed a monotonic decreasing trend, the content of soil available phosphorus showed an unimodal trend, and the contents of soil total carbon and nitrogen presented a bimodal distribution trend. (2) In Daiyun Mountain, the dominant phyla bacteria in soil were Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria and Actinobacteria (relative abundance > 10%). (3) The soil diversity indices, such as species number, Chao1 index, Shannon-Wiener index and ACE index, increased first and then decreased along the elevation gradients, reaching a maximum at 1100 m. (4) The co-occurrence network analysis further indicated that soil dominant bacterial community had an obviously modular structure at different elevations of Daiyun Mountain. The keystone taxa included the genera from the phylum of Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Verrucomicrobia, and the phylum of Proteobacteria had the maximum keystone genera.

  Conclusion  The elevation, slope, pH value, soil total nitrogen, hydrolysable nitrogen, and available phosphorus are the main factors affecting the forest soil dominant bacterial community structure and diversity at the different elevations of Daiyun Mountain.