Soil extracellular enzyme stoichiometry (EES) and microbial metabolic limitation deeply reflect soil quality. However, knowledge about the impacts of different grazing intensities on microbial metabolic limitation has not been well-documented.Herein, the influences of four sheep grazing intensities (ungrazed, UG; lightly grazed,LG; moderately grazed, MG; and heavily grazed, HG) on microbial metabolic limitation were investigated in typical steppe (14-year grazing) and desert steppe (17-year grazing). The activities of an extracellular enzyme (EEAs) involved in soil C, N, and P transformation were determined by fluorimetric microplate assay. We found that different grazing intensities significantly affected extracellular enzyme activities and EES. Compared to the treatments of UG, LG, and MG, microbial relative C limitation

Aridity is increasing in several regions because of global climate change, which strongly affects the soil microbial community. The soil pqqC-harboring bacterial community plays a vital role in soil P cycling and P availability. However, the effect of shifts in aridity on the pqqC community is largely unknown. Here, based on high-throughput sequencing technology, we investigated the response patterns of the diversity, co-occurrence networks, and assembly mechanisms of the soil pqqC communities along a natural aridity gradient in adjacent pairs of natural and disturbed grasslands in Inner Mongolia, China. The results showed that the α-diversity of the pqqC community first increased and then decreased with increasing aridity in the natural grassland, while it linearly increased as aridity increased in the disturbed grassland. The pqqC community dissimilarity significantly increased with increased aridity, exhibiting a steeper change rate in the disturbed grassland than in the natural grassland. Increased aridity altered the pqqC community composition, leading to increases in the relative abundance of Actinobacteria but decreases in Proteobacteria. The composition and structure of the pqqC community showed significant differences between natural and disturbed grasslands. In addition, the network analysis revealed that aridity improved the interactions among pqqC taxa and promoted the interspecific competition of pqqC microorganisms. The pqqC community assembly was primarily governed by stochastic processes, and the relative contribution of stochastic processes increased with increasing aridity. Furthermore, disturbances could affect pqqC-harboring bacterial interactions and assembly processes. Overall, our findings fill an important knowledge gap in our understanding of the influence of aridity on the diversity and assembly mechanism of the soil pqqC community in grassland ecosystems, and this work is thus conducive to predicting the pqqC community and its ecological services in response to future climate change.