Drought‐resistant fungi control soil organic matter decomposition and its response to temperature

By J. Curiel Yuste, Josep Peñuelas, M. Estiarte, J. Garcia-Mas, S. Mattana, Romà Ogaya, M. Pujol, Jordi Sardans. 2011

369 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Microbial‐mediated decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) ultimately makes a considerable contribution to soil respiration, which is typically the main source of CO2 arising from terrestrial ecosystems. Despite this central role in the decomposition of SOM, few studies have been conducted on how climate change may affect the soil microbial community and, furthermore, on how possible climate‐change induced alterations in the ecology of microbial communities may affect soil CO2 emissions. Here we present the results of a seasonal study on soil microbial community structure, SOM decomposition and its temperature sensitivity in two representative Mediterranean ecosystems where precipitation/throughfall exclusion has taken place during the last 10 years. Bacterial and fungal diversity was estimated using the terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism technique. Our results show that fungal diversity was less sensitive to seasonal changes in moisture, temperature and plant activity than bacterial diversity. On the other hand, fungal communities showed the ability to dynamically adapt throughout the seasons. Fungi also coped better with the 10 years of precipitation/throughfall exclusion compared with bacteria. The high resistance of fungal diversity to changes with respect to bacteria may open the controversy as to whether future ‘drier conditions’ for Mediterranean regions might favor fungal dominated microbial communities. Finally, our results indicate that the fungal community exerted a strong influence over the temporal and spatial variability of SOM decomposition and its sensitivity to temperature. The results, therefore, highlight the important role of fungi in the decomposition of terrestrial SOM, especially under the harsh environmental conditions of Mediterranean ecosystems, for which models predict even drier conditions in the future.

Subfields: Ecology, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/29b016c2c1f38ff0214e64ec157257c412f74a7d

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Citations in the corpus

Drought Stress and Root-Associated Bacterial Communities (2018, background): “…from addressing changes in fungal communities, as by and large the effect of drought on soil or root fungal communities is small or nonexistent (Yuste et al., 2011; Bouasria et al., 2012; Barnard et al., 2013; Fuchslueger et al., 2016); thus, it should be clarified that references in this text…”
Fungal communities are more sensitive indicators to non-extreme soil moisture variations than bacterial communities (2015, background): “The rapid observed shift is quite surprising, but could 296 be explained by rapid hyphal turnover (Staddon et al., 2003; de Vries et al., 2009) and the 297 ability of some taxa to grow even in drying periods (Bapiri et al., 2010; Yuste et al., 2011).”
Effects of climate extremes on the terrestrial carbon cycle: concepts, processes and potential future impacts (2015, background): “In Mediterranean ecosystems, for example, fungi were less affected by drought than bacteria and controlled soil organic matter decomposition (Curiel-Yuste et al., 2011).”
Effects of past and current drought on the composition and diversity of soil microbial communities (2019, background): “It is likely attributable to the chitinous cell walls of fungi, which should increase their resistance to environmental fluctuations, such as water stress (Holland and Coleman, 1987), and fungal hyphal growth (which most bacteria do not have) allowing them to cross small areas of dry soil (Yuste et ”
Microbial responses to a changing environment: implications for the future functioning of terrestrial ecosystems (2011, positive): “We argue that conflictingmicrobial responses to environmental change arise from compositional shifts inmicrobial communities that have functional implications for the biochemical cycling of C and N insoil, an ideasupportedbyaccumulatingevidence (Yuste et al. 2010).”
The interplay between microbial communities and soil properties (2023, positive): “As fungi are often considered less sensitive to drought than bacteria 115–117 , the fungal production of hydrophobic compounds that reduce water infiltration in soil may provide them with fitness advantages over bacteria 118 .”