Assessment of the Effects of Environmental Perturbations on Soil Ecology in A Terrestrial Mesocosm

Abstract

Climate change is altering ecosystems in unprecedented ways and necessitates the development of strategies that model ecosystems and allow for the evaluation of environmental impacts of perturbations: including climate events, novel approaches to agronomy or ecosystem management, and impacts of bio-industry and biotechnology innovations. Mesocosms present a platform to model some of the complexity of an ecosystem, while still being controlled and reproducible enough that they can be used to ask targeted questions and systematically assess the impacts of perturbation events. Herein, we established a methodological pipeline to assess the impact of three perturbation events (hydration, nutrification, contamination) upon plant-associated microbial communities using a terrestrial mesocosm. Mesocosms were assessed over a 30-day time-course following environmental perturbations, including modeling contamination with a foreign microbe via the introduction of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We developed and applied a suite of diagnostic and bioinformatic analyses, including digital droplet PCR, microscopy, and phylogenomic analyses to assess the impacts of a perturbation event in a system that models a terrestrial ecosystem. The resultant data show that our mesocosms are dynamic yet reproducible, and that the analysis pipeline presented here allowed for a longitudinal assessment of microbial population dynamics and abiotic soil characteristics following perturbations, as well as the fate of yeast in the soil. Notably, our data indicate that a single perturbation event can have long-lasting impact upon soil composition and underlying microbial populations. Thus, this approach can be used to ask targeted questions as well as gain insights on broader ecological trends of soil perturbation events.

Biodiversity and functional roles of soil organisms: An analysis of millipede populations in Southern Albania

“…In addition, Diplopoda are more tolerant of low humidity. Modern researchers K. Arnolds et al (2023) pay special attention to the role of an effective ecological assessment of soil organisms in the ecosystem management system. At the same time, they emphasize the need to establish effective population monitoring of species to form an information base for further assessment and development of preventive and regeneration measures.…”

“…The functioning of ecosystems is based on the principle of energy binding, thus preserving the internal organization of the structure. If there is a significant gradient between the energy reserves of individual components of the ecosystem, an imbalance occurs, with a significant increase in entropy and a decrease in the level of orderliness ( Arnolds et al, 2023). In such conditions, natural ecosystems are no longer able to maintain a state of stability, energy flows are dynamically changing in vertical and horizontal dimensions, and the ecosystem becomes unable to counteract external destructive influences.…”