Environment and microbiome drive different microbial traits and functions in the macroscale soil organic carbon cycle

作者：Daniel Wasner, Joerg Schnecker, Xingguo Han, Yifei Sun, Aline Frossard, Erick Zagal, Pascal Boeckx, Sebastian Döetterl · 发表于：Global Change Biology · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1111/gcb.17465 · 被引用次数：38 · 研究领域：Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics、Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology、Gut microbiota and health

Soil microbial traits and functions play a central role in soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics. However, at the macroscale (regional to global) it is still unresolved whether (i) specific environmental attributes (e.g., climate, geology, soil types) or (ii) microbial community composition drive key microbial traits and functions directly. To address this knowledge gap, we used 33 grassland topsoils (0-10 cm) from a geoclimatic gradient in Chile. First, we incubated the soils for 1 week in favorable standardized conditions and quantified a wide range of soil microbial traits and functions such as microbial biomass carbon (MBC), enzyme kinetics, microbial respiration, growth rates as well as carbon use efficiency (CUE). Second, we characterized climatic and physicochemical properties as well as bacterial and fungal community composition of the soils. We then applied regression analysis to investigate how strongly the measured microbial traits and functions were linked with the environmental setting versus microbial community composition. We show that environmental attributes (predominantly the amount of soil organic matter) determined patterns of MBC along the gradient, which in turn explained microbial respiration and growth rates. However, respiration and growth normalized for MBC (i.e., specific respiration and growth) were more linked to microbial community composition than environmental attributes. Notably, both specific respiration and growth followed distinct trends and w...