Rapid transfer of photosynthetic carbon through the plant-soil system in differently managed species-rich grasslands

By G. D. De Deyn, H. Quirk, Simon Oakley, N. Ostle, R. Bardgett. 2011

110 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Plant-soil interactions are central to short-term carbon (C) cycling through the rapid transfer of recently assimilated C from plant roots to soil biota. In grassland ecosystems, changes in C cycling are likely to be influenced by land use and management that changes vegetation and the associated soil microbial communities. Here we tested whether changes in grassland vegetation composition result- ing from management for plant diversity influences short- term rates of C assimilation and transfer from plants to soil microbes. To do this, we used an in situ 13 C-CO2 pulse- labelling approach to measure differential C uptake among different plant species and the transfer of the plant-derived 13 C to key groups of soil microbiota across selected treat- ments of a long-term plant diversity grassland restoration ex- periment. Results showed that plant taxa differed markedly in the rate of 13 C assimilation and concentration: uptake was greatest and 13 C concentration declined fastest in Ranun- culus repens, and assimilation was least and 13 C signature remained longest in mosses. Incorporation of recent plant- derived 13 C was maximal in all microbial phosopholipid fatty acid (PLFA) markers at 24 h after labelling. The greatest in- corporation of 13 C was in the PLFA 16:1!5, a marker for ar- buscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), while after 1 week most 13 C was retained in the PLFA18:2!6,9 which is indicative of assimilation of plant-derived 13 C by saprophytic fungi. Our results of 13 C assimilation and transfer within plant species and soil microbes were consistent across management treat- ments. Overall, our findings suggest that plant diversity restoration management may not directly affect the C assim- ilation or retention of C by individual plant taxa or groups of soil microbes, it can impact on the fate of recent C by changing their relative abundances in the plant-soil system. Moreover, across all treatments we found that plant-derived C is rapidly transferred specifically to AMF and decomposer fungi, indicating their consistent key role in the cycling of recent plant derived C.

Subfields: Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0e926fb1d5aecb010beb2516eff9f7873bf1ec0d

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Citations in the corpus

Small but active – pool size does not matter for carbon incorporation in below‐ground food webs (2016, result): “This con- firms earlier studies reporting highest incorporation of 13C into microbial PLFA markers within the first 3 days (De Deyn et al. 2011; Tavi et al. 2013).”
Changes in the composition and diversity of AMF communities mediated by management practices in a Mediterranean soil are related with increases in soil biological activity (2014, background): “In accordance with this, some authors have reported that the plant diversity influences the AMF community structure and increases AMF abundance (Burrows and Pfleger, 2002; König et al., 2010; De Deyn et al., 2011).”
Linking 3D Soil Structure and Plant-Microbe-Soil Carbon Transfer in the Rhizosphere (2018, background): “It has been shown that most of the plant C allocated to AM fungal hyphae is lost through respiration within 24 h (Johnson et al., 2002; De Deyn et al., 2011).”
Soil bacterial networks are less stable under drought than fungal networks (2018, unknown): “Fungal communities have been found to be more responsive than bacterial communities to vegetation change 35 , and there is accumulating evidence that fungi are the ﬁ rst consumers of belowground inputs of plant-derived C 24,36 .”