Soil microbial gene abundance rather than diversity and network complexity predominantly determines soil multifunctionality in Tibetan alpine grasslands along a precipitation gradient

作者：Junxiao Pan, Yang Li, Ruiyang Zhang, Dashuan Tian, Peiyan Wang, Lei Song, Quan Quan, Chen Chen, Shuli Niu, Xinyu Zhang, Jinsong Wang · 发表于：Functional Ecology · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1111/1365-2435.14542 · 被引用次数：32 · 研究领域：Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics、Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology、Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology

Abstract The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has mainly focused on plant communities, with comparably little known about soil microbial‐driven ecosystem functions. Climate change severely threatens soil microbial roles, but how soil microbial communities determine soil multifunctionality under climate change is poorly understood. Here, we evaluated the effects of diverse bacterial and fungal properties, including microbial gene abundance, diversity and network complexity, on soil multifunctionality (nine soil functions) across a 3000 km transect along a natural precipitation gradient in Tibetan alpine grasslands. Variation partitioning analyses were performed to disentangle the relative importance of bacterial and fungal properties to the variation of soil multifunctionality. Moreover, structural equation modelling was adopted to explore the influencing pathways of precipitation‐induced changes in plant and edaphic factors to soil microbial properties and, consequently, soil multifunctionality. Soil multifunctionality was positively associated with bacterial and fungal gene abundance, diversity and network complexity. Microbial gene abundance was the more important driver influencing soil multifunctionality than microbial diversity and network complexity. In addition, microbial gene abundance was mainly determined by precipitation‐induced changes in soil pH. Meanwhile, the effects of bacterial properties on soil multifunctionality were much larger ...