Belowground response of prairie restoration and resiliency to drought

Upton, Racheal N.; Bach, Elizabeth M.; Hofmockel, Kirsten

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2018.07.021

Cited by 20 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…Land managers and farmers can reduce their negative footprint on soil biodiversity by increasing their efforts in ecologically intensifying agricultural practices [66]. Arable land margins with flower strips will influence the soil biodiversity underneath the strips and possibly enhance the quality of surface water by preventing fertilizer and pesticide contamination [67,68]. Reducing soil tillage may enhance soil organic matter, which positively affects soil carbon storage, soil drainage, nutrient provisioning and, possibly, crop sensitivity to extreme weather events [25,66].…”

Section: Anthropogenic Impacts On Soil Biodiversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and Opportunities for Soil Biodiversity in the Anthropocene

2019

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Biodiversity on Earth is strongly affected by human alterations to the environment. The majority of studies have considered aboveground biodiversity, yet little is known about whether biodiversity changes belowground follow the same patterns as those observed aboveground. It is now established that communities of soil biota have been substantially altered by direct human activities such as soil sealing, agricultural land-use intensification, and biological invasions resulting from the introduction of non-native species. In addition, altered abiotic conditions resulting from climate change have also impacted soil biodiversity. These changes in soil biodiversity can alter ecosystem functions performed by the soil biota, and therefore, humaninduced global changes have a feedback effect on ecosystem services via altered soil biodiversity. Here, we highlight the major phenomena that threaten soil biodiversity, and we propose options to reverse the decline in soil biodiversity. We argue that it is essential to protect soil biodiversity as a rich reservoir that provides insurance against the changes wrought by the Anthropocene. Overall, we need to better understand the determinants of soil biodiversity and how they function, plan to avoid further losses, and restore soil biodiversity where possible. Safeguarding this rich biotic reservoir is essential for soil sustainability and, ultimately, the sustainability of human society.

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Section: Anthropogenic Impacts On Soil Biodiversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and Opportunities for Soil Biodiversity in the Anthropocene

2019

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“…The ability to accurately characterize microbial community dynamics under disturbances is critical to understanding microbial ecology and function (17,18). We found that removal of exDNA more precisely quantified bacterial responses to a short-term disturbance (drying-rewetting), but inclusion of exDNA did not obscure results to a large extent.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does extracellular DNA mask microbial responses to a pulse disturbance?

Kittredge

Dougherty

Glanville

et al. 2021

Preprint

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A major goal in microbial ecology is to predict how microbial communities will respond to global change. However, DNA-based sequencing that is intended to characterize live microbial communities includes extracellular DNA (exDNA) from non-viable cells. This could obscure relevant microbial responses, particularly to pulse disturbances which kill bacteria and have disproportionate effects on ecosystems. Here, we characterize bacterial communities before and after a drying-rewetting pulse disturbance, using an improved method for exDNA exclusion. We find that exDNA removal is important for detecting subtle yet significant changes in microbial abundance, diversity, and community composition across the disturbance. However, inclusion of exDNA did not obscure results to a large extent, only sometimes altering statistical significance but rarely changing the direction of the response or general conclusions about bacterial disturbance dynamics. Although there may be instances where exDNA removal is essential for accurate representation of microbial communities, our study suggests these scenarios will be difficult to predict a priori. Overall, we found no evidence that certain time points across the distrubance were more affected by exDNA inclusion, nor did the size or composition of exDNA pools accurately predict when exDNA would alter significance levels. However, exDNA dynamics did vary strongly across the two soil types tested.

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“…Bacteria and fungi both produce extracellular enzymes, and the increase in chitinase and phenol oxidase activities may signal a role in drought tolerance or recovery. Previous studies have shown that fungal and bacterial biomass and extracellular enzyme production often respond differently to drought and that they show distinct enzyme partitioning [50][51][52][53][54]. The interest in the role of drought in ecosystem functioning has not revealed a consistent response of microbial communities and extracellular enzyme activities to drought and recovery.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Root Fungal Endophytes and Microbial Extracellular Enzyme Activities Show Patterned Responses in Tall Fescues under Drought Conditions

et al. 2020

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Plant response to water stress can be modified by the rhizosphere microbial community, but the range of responses across plant genotypes is unclear. We imposed drought conditions on 116 Festuca arundinacea (tall fescue) accessions using a rainout shelter for 46 days, followed by irrigation, to stimulate drought recovery in 24 days. We hypothesized that prolonged water deficit results in a range of phenotypic diversity (i.e., green color index) across tall fescue genotypes that are associated with distinct microbial taxonomic and functional traits impacting plant drought tolerance. Microbial extracellular enzyme activities of chitinase and phenol oxidase (targeting chitin and lignin) increased in rhizospheres of the 20 most drought tolerant genotypes. Lower rates of fungal (dark septate) endophyte root infection were found in roots of the most drought tolerant genotypes. Bacterial 16S rRNA gene and fungal ITS sequencing showed shifts in microbial communities across water deficit conditions prior to drought, during drought, and at drought recovery, but was not patterned by drought tolerance levels of the plant host. The results suggest that taxonomic information from bacterial 16S rRNA gene and fungal ITS sequences provided little indication of microbial composition impacting drought tolerance of the host plant, but instead, microbial extracellular enzyme activities and root fungal infection results revealed patterned responses from drought.

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Belowground response of prairie restoration and resiliency to drought

Cited by 20 publications

References 71 publications

Challenges and Opportunities for Soil Biodiversity in the Anthropocene

Challenges and Opportunities for Soil Biodiversity in the Anthropocene

Does extracellular DNA mask microbial responses to a pulse disturbance?

Root Fungal Endophytes and Microbial Extracellular Enzyme Activities Show Patterned Responses in Tall Fescues under Drought Conditions

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