Microbes follow Humboldt: temperature drives plant and soil microbial diversity patterns from the Amazon to the Andes

Nottingham, Andrew T.; Fierer, Noah; Turner, Benjamín L.; Whitaker, Jeanette; Ostle, Nicholas J.; McNamara, Niall P.; Bardgett, Richard D.; Leff, Jonathan W.; Salinas, Norma; Silman, Miles R.; Kruuk, Loeske E. B.; Meir, Patrick

doi:10.1002/ecy.2482

Cited by 230 publications

(155 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…Bacteria are less sensitive to vegetation than soil fungi, especially in tropical forests (Barbaran et al ). Instead, shifts in bacterial community composition track environmental variation in soil nutrients as observed here and in Camenzind et al (), as well as moisture (Kivlin and Hawkes ), temperature (Nottingham et al ), and pH (Alfaro et al ). Our study suggests that fungal responses to the environment are not linear: fungi were mostly sensitive to small changes in resource availability and moisture and large changes in pH, but these plateaued at intermediate levels of environmental dissimilarity.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

Spatial and temporal turnover of soil microbial communities is not linked to function in a primary tropical forest

Kivlin

Hawkes

2020

Ecology

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The spatial and temporal linkages between turnover of soil microbial communities and their associated functions remain largely unexplored in terrestrial ecosystems. Yet defining these relationships and how they vary across ecosystems and microbial lineages is key to incorporating microbial communities into ecological forecasts and ecosystem models. To define linkages between turnover of soil bacterial and fungal communities and their function we sampled fungal and bacterial composition, abundance, and enzyme activities across a 3‐ha area of wet tropical primary forest over 2 yr. We show that fungal and bacterial communities both exhibited temporal turnover, but turnover of both groups was much lower than in temperate ecosystems. Turnover over time was driven by gain and loss of microbial taxa and not changes in abundance of individual species present in multiple samples. Only fungi varied over space with idiosyncratic variation that did not increase linearly with distance among sampling locations. Only phosphorus‐acquiring enzyme activities were linked to shifts in septate, decomposer fungal abundance; no enzymes were affected by composition or diversity of fungi or bacteria. Although temporal and spatial variation in composition was appreciable, because turnover of microbial communities did not alter the functional repertoire of decomposing enzymes, functional redundancy among taxa may be high in this ecosystem. Slow temporal turnover of tropical soil microbial communities and large functional redundancy suggests that shifts in abundance of particular functional groups may capture ecosystem function more accurately than composition in these heterogeneous ecosystems.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 58%

Spatial and temporal turnover of soil microbial communities is not linked to function in a primary tropical forest

Kivlin

Hawkes

2020

Ecology

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“…Microbial community composition and physiology responded to temperature manipulation. Microbial community composition varied naturally along the gradient (Nottingham et al ), but a consistent subset of taxa within each community responded to temperature change across soil types. The temperature response analysis (RR) of common microbial taxa revealed 30 warm‐responsive and 18 cold–responsive taxa (Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial responses to warming enhance soil carbon loss following translocation across a tropical forest elevation gradient

et al. 2019

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Tropical soils contain huge carbon stocks, which climate warming is projected to reduce by stimulating organic matter decomposition, creating a positive feedback that will promote further warming. Models predict that the loss of carbon from warming soils will be mediated by microbial physiology, but no empirical data are available on the response of soil carbon and microbial physiology to warming in tropical forests, which dominate the terrestrial carbon cycle. Here we show that warming caused a considerable loss of soil carbon that was enhanced by associated changes in microbial physiology. By translocating soils across a 3000 m elevation gradient in tropical forest, equivalent to a temperature change of ± 15 °C, we found that soil carbon declined over 5 years by 4% in response to each 1 °C increase in temperature. The total loss of carbon was related to its original quantity and lability, and was enhanced by changes in microbial physiology including increased microbial carbon‐use‐efficiency, shifts in community composition towards microbial taxa associated with warmer temperatures, and increased activity of hydrolytic enzymes. These findings suggest that microbial feedbacks will cause considerable loss of carbon from tropical forest soils in response to predicted climatic warming this century.

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“…The soils below 1,000 m, at the two lowland sites, are HaplicAlisols (Ultisols) (194 m asl) and Haplic Cambisols (Inceptisols) (210 m asl) (according to FAO, with USDA Soil Taxonomy in parentheses). Further descriptions of soil, climate and floristic composition of these sites are reported elsewhere (Nottingham, Fierer, et al, ; Fyllas et al, ; Rapp et al, ; Whitaker et al, ; van de Weg, Meir, Grace, & Atkin, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Elevation gradients on mountainsides have been used to understand plant biogeography by ecologists since the 18th century (Linnaeus, ; von Humboldt & Bonpland, ), but more recently they have been used as powerful tools to understand how climate change affects plant and microbial ecology (Nottingham, Whitaker, et al, ; Sundqvist, Sanders, & Wardle, ), by revealing the long‐term temperature acclimation or adaptive changes in plant physiology, soil processes and soil microbial composition (Giardina, Litton, Crow, & Asner, ; Girardin et al, ; Nottingham, Fierer, et al, ). Here, we used a 3.5 km elevation gradient in Peru to explore the long‐term temperature adaptation of bacterial and fungal growth to a 20°C gradient in MAT.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Adaptation of soil microbial growth to temperature: Using a tropical elevation gradient to predict future changes

Nottingham

Bååth

Reischke

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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Terrestrial biogeochemical feedbacks to the climate are strongly modulated by the temperature response of soil microorganisms. Tropical forests, in particular, exert a major influence on global climate because they are the most productive terrestrial ecosystem. We used an elevation gradient across tropical forest in the Andes (a gradient of 20°C mean annual temperature, MAT), to test whether soil bacterial and fungal community growth responses are adapted to long‐term temperature differences. We evaluated the temperature dependency of soil bacterial and fungal growth using the leucine‐ and acetate‐incorporation methods, respectively, and determined indices for the temperature response of growth: Q 10 (temperature sensitivity over a given 10oC range) and T min (the minimum temperature for growth). For both bacterial and fungal communities, increased MAT (decreased elevation) resulted in increases in Q 10 and T min of growth. Across a MAT range from 6°C to 26°C, the Q 10 and T min varied for bacterial growth ( Q 10–20 = 2.4 to 3.5; T min = −8°C to −1.5°C) and fungal growth ( Q 10–20 = 2.6 to 3.6; T min = −6°C to −1°C). Thus, bacteria and fungi did not differ significantly in their growth temperature responses with changes in MAT. Our findings indicate that across natural temperature gradients, each increase in MAT by 1°C results in increases in T min of microbial growth by approximately 0.3°C and Q 10–20 by 0.05, consistent with long‐term temperature adaptation of soil microbial communities. A 2°C warming would increase microbial activity across a MAT gradient of 6°C to 26°C by 28% to 15%, respectively, and temperature adaptation of microbial communities would further increase activity by 1.2% to 0.3%. The impact of warming on microbial activity, and the related impact on soil carbon cycling, is thus greater in regions with lower MAT. These results can be used to predict future changes in the temperature response of microbial activity over different levels of warming and over large temperature ranges, extending to tropical regions.

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Microbes follow Humboldt: temperature drives plant and soil microbial diversity patterns from the Amazon to the Andes

Cited by 230 publications

References 73 publications

Spatial and temporal turnover of soil microbial communities is not linked to function in a primary tropical forest

Spatial and temporal turnover of soil microbial communities is not linked to function in a primary tropical forest

Microbial responses to warming enhance soil carbon loss following translocation across a tropical forest elevation gradient

Adaptation of soil microbial growth to temperature: Using a tropical elevation gradient to predict future changes

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