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Abstract
Empirical evidence for the response of soil carbon cycling to the combined effects of warming, drought and diversity loss is scarce. Microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) plays a central role in regulating the flow of carbon through soil, yet how biotic and abiotic factors interact to drive it remains unclear. Here, we combine distinct community inocula (a biotic factor) with different temperature and moisture conditions (abiotic factors) to manipulate microbial diversity and community structure within a model soil. While community composition and diversity are the strongest predictors of CUE, abiotic factors modulated the relationship between diversity and CUE, with CUE being positively correlated with bacterial diversity only under high moisture. Altogether these results indicate that the diversity × ecosystem-function relationship can be impaired under non-favorable conditions in soils, and that to understand changes in soil C cycling we need to account for the multiple facets of global changes.
Department
Soil Biogeochemistry and Microbial Ecology
Publication Date
7-23-2020
Journal Title
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Nature
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Domeignoz-Horta, L.A., Pold, G., Liu, XJ.A. et al. Microbial diversity drives carbon use efficiency in a model soil. Nat Commun 11, 3684 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17502-z
Comments
This is an open access article published by Springer Nature in Nature Communications in 2020, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17502-z