The effect of resource history on the functioning of soil microbial communities is maintained across time

By A. D. Keiser, M. Strickland, Noah Fierer, M. Bradford. 2011

136 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Historical resource conditions appear to influ- ence microbial community function. With time, histori- cal influences might diminish as populations respond to the contemporary environment. Alternatively, they may persist given factors such as contrasting genetic potentials for adap- tation to a new environment. Using experimental micro- cosms, we test competing hypotheses that function of dis- tinct soil microbial communities in common environments (H1a) converge or (H1b) remain dissimilar over time. Us- ing a 6◊ 2 (soil community inoculum ◊ litter environment) full-factorial design, we compare decomposition rates in ex- perimental microcosms containing grass or hardwood litter environments. After 100 days, communities that develop are inoculated into fresh litters and decomposition followed for another 100 days. We repeat this for a third, 100-day pe- riod. In each successive, 100-day period, we find higher de- composition rates (i.e. functioning) suggesting communities function better when they have an experimental history of the contemporary environment. Despite these functional gains, differences in decomposition rates among initially distinct communities persist, supporting the hypothesis that dissimi- larity is maintained across time. In contrast to function, com- munity composition is more similar following a common, ex- perimental history. We also find that "specialization" on one experimental environment incurs a cost, with loss of func- tion in the alternate environment. For example, experimen- tal history of a grass-litter environment reduced decompo- sition when communities were inoculated into a hardwood- litter environment. Our work demonstrates experimentally that despite expectations of fast growth rates, physiological flexibility and rapid evolution, initial functional differences between microbial communities are maintained across time. These findings question whether microbial dynamics can be omitted from models of ecosystem processes if we are to pre- dict reliably global change effects on biogeochemical cycles.

Subfields: Ecology, Genetics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6a7b0584254ce076968d7b20fc3cbc0974b26d83

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In Ecology

In Genetics

G. T. Freschet

In Molecular Biology

Citations in the corpus

Multiple mechanisms for trait effects on litter decomposition: moving beyond home‐field advantage with a new hypothesis (2012, background): “Several studies have demonstrated such persistent differences in soil decomposer community composition functions, as evidenced by their dissimilar capacities to decompose litter of contrasting quality, both for microbes (Strickland et al. 2009a,b; Keiser et al. 2011) and for soil fauna (e.”
Disentangling the mechanisms underlying functional differences among decomposer communities (2014, background): “a litter type does, however, differ (Keiser et al. 2011) and so it”
Decay rates of leaf litters from arbuscular mycorrhizal trees are more sensitive to soil effects than litters from ectomycorrhizal trees (2015, background): “Conversely, decomposer communities exposed to high-quality litter matrices with lower chemical diversity will have a narrower functional breadth (Van der Heijden, Bardgett & van Straalen 2008; Keiser et al. 2011, 2014; Keiser, Knoepp & Bradford 2013).”