Diversity in nonlinear responses to soil moisture shapes evolutionary constraints in Brachypodium.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Monroe JG
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8664479 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Ecosystem carbon losses from soil microbial respiration are a key component of global carbon cycling, resulting in the transfer of 40-70 Pg carbon from soil to the atmosphere each year. Because these microbial processes can feed back to climate change, understanding respiration responses to environmental factors is necessary for improved projections. We focus on respiration responses to soil moisture, which remain unresolved in ecosystem models. A common assumption of large-scale models is that soil microorganisms respond to moisture in the same way, regardless of location or climate. Here, we show that soil respiration is constrained by historical climate. We find that historical rainfall controls both the moisture dependence and sensitivity of respiration. Moisture sensitivity, defined as the slope of respiration vs. moisture, increased fourfold across a 480-mm rainfall gradient, resulting in twofold greater carbon loss on average in historically wetter soils compared with historically drier soils. The respiration-moisture relationship was resistant to environmental change in field common gardens and field rainfall manipulations, supporting a persistent effect of historical climate on microbial respiration. Based on these results, predicting future carbon cycling with climate change will require an understanding of the spatial variation and temporal lags in microbial responses created by historical rainfall.
| S-EPMC5474806 | biostudies-literature
Project description:AbstarctConstraints on soil moisture can guide agricultural practices, act as input into weather, flooding and climate models and inform water resource policies. Space-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) observations provide near-global coverage, even in the presence of clouds, of proxies for soil moisture derived from the amplitude and phase content of radar imagery. We describe results from a 1.5 year-long InSAR time series spanning the March, 2015 extreme precipitation event in the hyperarid Atacama desert of Chile, constraining the immediate increase in soil moisture and drying out over the following months, as well as the response to a later, smaller precipitation event. The inferred temporal evolution of soil moisture is remarkably consistent between independent, overlapping SAR tracks covering a region ~100 km in extent. The unusually large rain event, combined with the extensive spatial and temporal coverage of the SAR dataset, present an unprecedented opportunity to image the time-evolution of soil characteristics over different surface types. Constraints on the timescale of shallow water storage after precipitation events are increasingly valuable as global water resources continue to be stretched to their limits and communities continue to develop in flood-prone areas.
| S-EPMC5501829 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Variation in microbial species diversity has typically been explained as the outcome of local ecological factors driving species coexistence, overlooking the roles of evolutionary constraints. Here, we argue that macro-evolutionary niche conservatism and unequal diversification rates among phylum-level lineages are strong determinants of diversity-environment relationships in bacterial systems. That is, apart from stochasticity, environmental effects operate most strongly on phylum composition, which in turn dictates the species diversity of bacterial communities. This concept is demonstrated using bacterioplankton in the surface seawaters of the East China Sea. Furthermore, we show that the species richness of a local bacterioplankton community can generally be estimated based on the relative abundances of phyla and their contributions of species numbers in the global seawater pool-highlighting the important influence of evolutionary constraints on local community diversity.
| S-EPMC6462047 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We analyzed the effects on a soil microbial community of short-term alterations in air temperature, soil moisture and ultraviolet radiation and assessed the role of invertebrates (species Enchytraeus crypticus) in modulating the community's response to these factors. The reference soil, Lufa 2.2, was incubated for 48 h, with and without invertebrates, under the following conditions: standard (20 °C + 50% water holding capacity (WHC)); increased air temperature (15-25 °C or 20-30 °C + 50% WHC); flood (20 °C + 75% WHC); drought (20 °C + 25% WHC); and ultraviolet radiation (UV) (20 °C + 50% WHC + UV). BIOLOG EcoPlates and 16S rDNA sequencing (Illumina) were used to assess the microbial community's physiological profile and the bacterial community's structure, respectively. The bacterial abundance (estimated by 16S rDNA qPCR) did not change. Most of the conditions led to an increase in microbial activity and a decrease in diversity. The structure of the bacterial community was particularly affected by higher air temperatures (20-30 °C, without E. crypticus) and floods (with E. crypticus). Effects were observed at the class, genera and OTU levels. The presence of invertebrates mostly resulted in the attenuation of the observed effects, highlighting the importance of considering microbiome-invertebrate interactions. Considering future climate changes, the effects described here raise concern. This study provides fundamental knowledge to develop effective strategies to mitigate these negative outcomes. However, long-term studies integrating biotic and abiotic factors are needed.
| S-EPMC9142034 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Many tropical rain forest regions are at risk of increased future drought. The net effects of drought on forest ecosystem functioning will be substantial if important ecological thresholds are passed. However, understanding and predicting these effects is challenging using observational studies alone. Field-based rainfall exclusion (canopy throughfall exclusion; TFE) experiments can offer mechanistic insight into the response to extended or severe drought and can be used to help improve model-based simulations, which are currently inadequate. Only eight TFE experiments have been reported for tropical rain forests. We examine them, synthesizing key results and focusing on two processes that have shown threshold behavior in response to drought: (1) tree mortality and (2) the efflux of carbon dioxdie from soil, soil respiration. We show that: (a) where tested using large-scale field experiments, tropical rain forest tree mortality is resistant to long-term soil moisture deficit up to a threshold of 50% of the water that is extractable by vegetation from the soil, but high mortality occurs beyond this value, with evidence from one site of increased autotrophic respiration, and (b) soil respiration reaches its peak value in response to soil moisture at significantly higher soil moisture content for clay-rich soils than for clay-poor soils. This first synthesis of tropical TFE experiments offers the hypothesis that low soil moisture-related thresholds for key stress responses in soil and vegetation may prove to be widely applicable across tropical rain forests despite the diversity of these forests.
| S-EPMC4777016 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Ice-free soils in the McMurdo Dry Valleys select for taxa able to cope with challenging environmental conditions, including extreme chemical water activity gradients, freeze-thaw cycling, desiccation, and solar radiation regimes. The low biotic complexity of Dry Valley soils makes them well suited to investigate environmental and spatial influences on bacterial community structure. Water tracks are annually wetted habitats in the cold-arid soils of Antarctica that form briefly each summer with moisture sourced from snow melt, ground ice thaw, and atmospheric deposition via deliquescence and vapor flow into brines. Compared to neighboring arid soils, water tracks are highly saline and relatively moist habitats. They represent a considerable area (?5-10 km2) of the Dry Valley terrestrial ecosystem, an area that is expected to increase with ongoing climate change. The goal of this study was to determine how variation in the environmental conditions of water tracks influences the composition and diversity of microbial communities. We found significant differences in microbial community composition between on- and off-water track samples, and across two distinct locations. Of the tested environmental variables, soil salinity was the best predictor of community composition, with members of the Bacteroidetes phylum being relatively more abundant at higher salinities and the Actinobacteria phylum showing the opposite pattern. There was also a significant, inverse relationship between salinity and bacterial diversity. Our results suggest water track formation significantly alters dry soil microbial communities, likely influencing subsequent ecosystem functioning. We highlight how Dry Valley water tracks could be a useful model system for understanding the potential habitability of transiently wetted environments found on the surface of Mars.
| S-EPMC7873294 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) affect microbial metabolic processes at single cell level or lab-culture strains. However, the impact of different AgNPs properties such as the particle, ion release, and shape on functional responses of natural soil microbial communities remain poorly understood. Therefore, we assessed the relative importance of particles and ions of AgNPs in bacterial toxicity and how the functional diversity of soil microbial communities were impacted by AgNPs shapes (i.e., plates, spheres, and rods) in laboratory incubations. Our results showed that the relative contribution of AgNPs(particle) increased with increasing exposure concentrations (accounted for about 60-68% of the total toxicity at the highest exposure level). In addition, the functional composition of the microbial community differed significantly according to different AgNPs shapes. The various properties of AgNPs thus can significantly and differentially affect the functional composition of microbial communities and associated ecosystem processes depending on the level of environmental exposure.
| S-EPMC4959451 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Flood events are now recognized as potentially important occasions for the transfer of soil microbes to stream ecosystems. Yet, little is known about these "dynamic pulses of microbial life" for stream bacterial community composition (BCC) and diversity. In this study, we explored the potential alteration of stream BCC by soil inoculation during high flow events in six pre-alpine first order streams and the larger Oberer Seebach. During 1 year, we compared variations of BCC in soil water, stream water and in benthic biofilms at different flow conditions (low to intermediate flows versus high flow). Bacterial diversity was lowest in biofilms, followed by soils and highest in headwater streams and the Oberer Seebach. In headwater streams, bacterial diversity was significantly higher during high flow, as compared to low flow (Shannon diversity: 7.6 versus 7.9 at low versus high flow, respectively, p < 0.001). Approximately 70% of the bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) from streams and stream biofilms were the same as in soil water, while in the latter one third of the OTUs were specific to high flow conditions. These soil high-flow OTUs were also found in streams and biofilms at other times of the year. These results demonstrate the relevance of floods in generating short and reoccurring inoculation events for flowing waters. Moreover, they show that soil microbial inoculation during high flow enhances microbial diversity and shapes fluvial BCC even during low flow. Hence, soil microbial inoculation during floods could act as a previously overlooked driver of microbial diversity in headwater streams.
| S-EPMC8463373 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Extreme precipitation events are predicted to occur more frequently and will have significant influences on terrestrial ecosystem carbon (C) cycling in the future. However, response patterns of soil respiration to precipitation changes remain uncertain in terrestrial ecosystems. A field experiment with seven precipitation treatments (i.e. from -60% to +60% of ambient precipitation to form a drought to wet precipitation gradient) was conducted over three growing seasons (2010-2012) in a semiarid temperate steppe of Northern China. Results showed a nonlinear response pattern of soil respiration along the experimental precipitation gradient, with soil respiration suppressed by decreased precipitation and enhanced by increased precipitation. Over the three growing seasons, soil respiration was reduced more under the three drought treatments (by 45.8, 32.8, and 15.9% under the -60, -40, and -20% treatments, respectively) than stimulated under the three wet treatments (by 8.9, 14.3, and 18.5% under the +20, +40, and +60% treatments, respectively). Our results indicate that soil respiration was more sensitive to decreased than increased precipitation treatments. The nonlinear and asymmetric responses of soil respiration to precipitation changes should be built into ecosystem models to project ecosystem C cycling associated with climate change.
| S-EPMC5374450 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Abundant evidence has shown that grazing alters plant functional traits, community structure and ecosystem functioning of grasslands. Few studies, however, have tested how plant responses to grazing are mediated by resource availability and plant functional group identity. We examined the effects of grazing on functional traits across a broad range of species along a soil moisture gradient in Inner Mongolia grassland. Our results showed that trait syndromes of plant size (individual biomass) and shoot growth (leaf N content and leaf density) distinguished plant species responses to grazing. The effects of grazing on functional traits were mediated by soil moisture and dependent on functional group identity. For most species, grazing decreased plant height but increased leaf N and specific leaf area (SLA) along the moisture gradient. Grazing enhanced the community-weighted attributes (leaf NCWM and SLACWM), which were triggered mainly by the positive trait responses of annuals and biennials and perennial grasses, and increased relative abundance of perennial forbs. Our results suggest that grazing-induced species turnover and increased intraspecific trait variability are two drivers for the observed changes in community weighted attributes. The dominant perennial bunchgrasses exhibited mixed tolerance-resistance strategies to grazing and mixed acquisitive-conservative strategies in resource utilization.
| S-EPMC4676060 | biostudies-literature