Dataset Information

Biotic interactions mediate soil microbial feedbacks to climate change.

ABSTRACT: Decomposition of organic material by soil microbes generates an annual global release of 50-75 Pg carbon to the atmosphere, ?7.5-9 times that of anthropogenic emissions worldwide. This process is sensitive to global change factors, which can drive carbon cycle-climate feedbacks with the potential to enhance atmospheric warming. Although the effects of interacting global change factors on soil microbial activity have been a widespread ecological focus, the regulatory effects of interspecific interactions are rarely considered in climate feedback studies. We explore the potential of soil animals to mediate microbial responses to warming and nitrogen enrichment within a long-term, field-based global change study. The combination of global change factors alleviated the bottom-up limitations on fungal growth, stimulating enzyme production and decomposition rates in the absence of soil animals. However, increased fungal biomass also stimulated consumption rates by soil invertebrates, restoring microbial process rates to levels observed under ambient conditions. Our results support the contemporary theory that top-down control in soil food webs is apparent only in the absence of bottom-up limitation. As such, when global change factors alleviate the bottom-up limitations on microbial activity, top-down control becomes an increasingly important regulatory force with the capacity to dampen the strength of positive carbon cycle-climate feedbacks.

SUBMITTER: Crowther TW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4460469 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Biotic interactions mediate soil microbial feedbacks to climate change.

Crowther Thomas W TW Thomas Stephen M SM Maynard Daniel S DS Baldrian Petr P Covey Kristofer K Frey Serita D SD van Diepen Linda T A LT Bradford Mark A MA

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20150518 22

Decomposition of organic material by soil microbes generates an annual global release of 50-75 Pg carbon to the atmosphere, ∼7.5-9 times that of anthropogenic emissions worldwide. This process is sensitive to global change factors, which can drive carbon cycle-climate feedbacks with the potential to enhance atmospheric warming. Although the effects of interacting global change factors on soil microbial activity have been a widespread ecological focus, the regulatory effects of interspecific inte ...[more]

PMID: 26038557

Similar Datasets

Project description:The rise of global temperature causes the degradation of the substantial reserves of carbon (C) stored in tundra soils, in which microbial processes play critical roles. Viruses are known to influence the soil C cycle by encoding auxiliary metabolic genes and infecting key microorganisms, but their regulation of microbial communities under climate warming remains unexplored. In this study, we evaluated the responses of viral communities for about 5 years of experimental warming at two depths (15 to 25 cm and 45 to 55 cm) in the Alaskan permafrost region. Our results showed that the viral community and functional gene composition and abundances (including viral functional genes related to replication, structure, infection, and lysis) were significantly influenced by environmental conditions such as total nitrogen (N), total C, and soil thawing duration. Although long-term warming did not impact the viral community composition at the two depths, some glycoside hydrolases encoded by viruses were more abundant at both depths of the warmed plots. With the continuous reduction of total C, viruses may alleviate methane release by altering infection strategies on methanogens. Importantly, viruses can adopt lysogenic and lytic lifestyles to manipulate microbial communities at different soil depths, respectively, which could be one of the major factors causing the differences in microbial responses to warming. This study provides a new ecological perspective on how viruses regulate the responses of microbes to warming at community and functional scales. IMPORTANCE Permafrost thawing causes microbial release of greenhouse gases, exacerbating climate warming. Some previous studies examined the responses of the microbial communities and functions to warming in permafrost region, but the roles of viruses in mediating the responses of microbial communities to warming are poorly understood. This study revealed that warming induced changes in some viral functional classes and in the virus/microbe ratios for specific lineages, which might influence the entire microbial community. Furthermore, differences in viral communities and functions, along with soil depths, are important factors influencing microbial responses to warming. Collectively, our study revealed the regulation of microbial communities by viruses and demonstrated the importance of viruses in the microbial ecology research.

Project description:Climate change is expected to alter biotic interactions, and may lead to temporal and spatial mismatches of interacting species. Although the importance of interactions for climate change risk assessments is increasingly acknowledged in observational and experimental studies, biotic interactions are still rarely incorporated in species distribution models. We assessed the potential impacts of climate change on the obligate interaction between Aeshna viridis and its egg-laying plant Stratiotes aloides in Europe, based on an ensemble modelling technique. We compared three different approaches for incorporating biotic interactions in distribution models: (1) We separately modelled each species based on climatic information, and intersected the future range overlap ('overlap approach'). (2) We modelled the potential future distribution of A. viridis with the projected occurrence probability of S. aloides as further predictor in addition to climate ('explanatory variable approach'). (3) We calibrated the model of A. viridis in the current range of S. aloides and multiplied the future occurrence probabilities of both species ('reference area approach'). Subsequently, all approaches were compared to a single species model of A. viridis without interactions. All approaches projected a range expansion for A. viridis. Model performance on test data and amount of range gain differed depending on the biotic interaction approach. All interaction approaches yielded lower range gains (up to 667% lower) than the model without interaction. Regarding the contribution of algorithm and approach to the overall uncertainty, the main part of explained variation stems from the modelling algorithm, and only a small part is attributed to the modelling approach. The comparison of the no-interaction model with the three interaction approaches emphasizes the importance of including obligate biotic interactions in projective species distribution modelling. We recommend the use of the 'reference area approach' as this method allows a separation of the effect of climate and occurrence of host plant.

Dataset Information

Biotic interactions mediate soil microbial feedbacks to climate change.

Publications

Biotic interactions mediate soil microbial feedbacks to climate change.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets