Microbial carbon limitation: The need for integrating microorganisms into our understanding of ecosystem carbon cycling

作者：J. Soong, Lucia Fuchslueger, S. Marañón-Jiménez, M. Torn, I. Janssens, J. Peñuelas, Andreas Richter · 发表于：Global Change Biology · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.1111/gcb.14962 · 被引用次数：452 · 研究领域：Medicine、Environmental Science

Numerous studies have demonstrated that fertilization with nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium increases plant productivity in both natural and managed ecosystems, demonstrating that primary productivity is nutrient limited in most terrestrial ecosystems. In contrast, it has been demonstrated that heterotrophic microbial communities in soil are primarily limited by organic carbon or energy. While this concept of contrasting limitations, that is, microbial carbon and plant nutrient limitation, is based on strong evidence that we review in this paper, it is often ignored in discussions of ecosystem response to global environment changes. The plant‐centric perspective has equated plant nutrient limitations with those of whole ecosystems, thereby ignoring the important role of the heterotrophs responsible for soil decomposition in driving ecosystem carbon storage. To truly integrate carbon and nutrient cycles in ecosystem science, we must account for the fact that while plant productivity may be nutrient limited, the secondary productivity by heterotrophic communities is inherently carbon limited. Ecosystem carbon cycling integrates the independent physiological responses of its individual components, as well as tightly coupled exchanges between autotrophs and heterotrophs. To the extent that the interacting autotrophic and heterotrophic processes are controlled by organisms that are limited by nutrient versus carbon accessibility, respectively, we propose that ...