Fungal communities are more sensitive indicators to non-extreme soil moisture variations than bacterial communities

By Aurore Kaisermann, P. Maron, Léa Beaumelle, J. Lata. 2015

212 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many studies have focused on the impact of intense drought and rain events on soil functioning and diversity, but little attention has been paid to the response of microbial communities to non-extreme soil moisture variations. However, small fluctuations of soil water content represent a common situation that ought to be examined before understanding and deciphering the impact of extreme events. Here, we tested the impact of a decrease in average soil water content and small water content fluctuations in non-extreme conditions on microbial community composition and C mineralisation rate of a temperate meadow soil. Two soil microcosm sets were incubated at high and low constant moisture and a third set was subjected to 4 short dry–wet cycles between these two soil moistures. No robust change in bacterial community composition, molecular microbial biomass, and fungal:bacterial ratio were associated with soil water content change. On the contrary, the fungal community composition rapidly alternated between states corresponding to the high and low levels of soil moisture content. In addition, gross C mineralisation was correlated with soil moisture, with a noteworthy absence of a Birch effect (C over-mineralisation) during the wetting. This study suggests that some fungal populations could coexist by occupying different moisture niches, and high fungal community plasticity would classify them as more sensitive indicators of soil moisture than bacteria. Moreover, under non-stressed conditions, the community composition did not affect metabolic performance so a future decrease in average soil moisture content should not result in a supplemental loss in soil carbon stocks by a Birch effect.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2fc37a57ee15dd4beefa9863d6da6583f0b5519f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. Josep Peñuelas
2. Lei Liu
3. Catherine Preece
4. Jeremiah A. Henning
5. M. Cregger
6. Erik Verbruggen
7. J. Weedon
8. A. Classen

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Lei Liu
2. Catherine Preece
3. Josep Peñuelas
4. A. Classen
5. Jordi Sardans
6. Romà Ogaya
7. M. Estiarte
8. Joan Llusià

In Soil Science

1. Josep Peñuelas
2. M. Cregger
3. Erik Verbruggen
4. J. Weedon
5. A. Classen
6. Jordi Sardans

Citations in the corpus

• Direct and indirect effects of climate change on soil microbial and soil microbial‐plant interactions: What lies ahead? (2015, background): “E-mail: aimee.classen@snm.ku.dk”
• Effects of past and current drought on the composition and diversity of soil microbial communities (2019, background): “However, it is difficult to generalise across other systems, and there is some evidence indicating that fungi are more sensitive than bacteria to smaller changes in soil moisture (Kaisermann et al., 2015) with some cases where fungal abundance was more greatly reduced by drought (Cregger et al.”