Resilience in soil bacterial communities of the boreal forest from one to five years after wildfire across a severity gradient

Whitman, Thea; Woolet, Jamie; Sikora, Miranda C.; Johnson, Dana B.; Whitman, Ellen

doi:10.1016/j.soilbio.2022.108755

Cited by 12 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…Similar identification of potentially fire-adapted microbes across ecosystems may provide bioindicators of post-fire response. For example, consistent with others’ findings of the enrichment of Blastococcus in burnt soils 73 , its family Geodermatophilaceae was found here to be associated and enriched in both burnt litter and soil substrate. The preferences by specific groups may be a consequence of fire-induced substrate heterogeneity, and further catalyze specific changes in ecosystem processes given their functional roles in nutrient cycling and decomposition 83 .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…A reduced importance for soil properties compared to site-level characteristics and soil layers has also been shown in Wisconsin pine barrens 72 and so may be a common feature of these systems. Ecosystems with more severe and/or less frequent fires are likely to still have bacterial community differences among substrate types, but will also have greater fire-induced changes to plants and soil variables than seen here, and these shifts may be more readily tied to responses of bacterial communities to fire 73 . Bacterial shifts, however, do not appear to depend on fire-induced plant or soil changes alone, and neither on localized fire effects associated with pine proximity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

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Substrate and low intensity fires influence bacterial communities in longleaf pine savanna

Dao

Potts

Johnson

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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Bacterial communities associated with vegetation-soil interfaces have important roles in terrestrial ecosystems. These bacterial communities, studied almost exclusively in unburnt ecosystems or those affected by rare, high-intensity wildfires, have been understudied in fire-frequented grasslands and savannas. The composition of ground-level bacterial communities was explored in an old-growth pine savanna with a centuries-long management history of prescribed fires every 1–2 years. Using 16S metabarcoding, hypotheses were tested regarding differences in bacterial families of litter and soil surface substrates in patches of ground layer vegetation that were naturally burnt or unburnt during landscape-level prescribed fires. Litter/soil substrates and fire/no fire treatments explained 67.5% of bacterial community variation and differences, driven by relative abundance shifts of specific bacterial families. Fires did not strongly affect plant or soil variables, which were not linked to bacterial community differences. Litter/soil substrates and the naturally patchy frequent fires appear to generate microhabitat heterogeneity in this pine savanna, driving responses of bacterial families. Prescribed fire management may benefit from considering how fire-altered substrate heterogeneity influences and maintains microbial diversity and function, especially in these fiery ecosystems. Frequent, low-intensity fires appear ecologically important in maintaining the diverse microbial foundation that underlie ecosystem processes and services in fire-frequented habitats.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Substrate and low intensity fires influence bacterial communities in longleaf pine savanna

Dao

Potts

Johnson

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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“…Post-fire environment affinity was assessed by determining which taxa became enriched in burned soils vs unburned controls after a 6-month incubation. Then, we applied these trait assignments to a field dataset of natural wildfires from the same region, 1 and 5 yr post-burn 6 , 32 , to evaluate the importance of each trait in the field. Finally, we used respiration data from the incubations of the experimentally burned cores to explore whether changes in microbial communities constrain soil C mineralization.…”

Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimentally determined traits shape bacterial community composition one and five years following wildfire

Johnson,

Woolet,

Yedinak

et al. 2023

Nat Ecol Evol

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Wildfires represent major ecological disturbances, burning 2–3% of Earth’s terrestrial area each year with sometimes drastic effects above- and belowground. Soil bacteria offer an ideal, yet understudied system within which to explore fundamental principles of fire ecology. To understand how wildfires restructure soil bacterial communities and alter their functioning, we sought to translate aboveground fire ecology to belowground systems by determining which microbial traits are important post-fire and whether changes in bacterial communities affect carbon cycling. We employed an uncommon approach to assigning bacterial traits, by first running three laboratory experiments to directly determine which microbes survive fires, grow quickly post-fire and/or thrive in the post-fire environment, while tracking CO2 emissions. We then quantified the abundance of taxa assigned to each trait in a large field dataset of soils one and five years after wildfires in the boreal forest of northern Canada. We found that fast-growing bacteria rapidly dominate post-fire soils but return to pre-burn relative abundances by five years post-fire. Although both fire survival and affinity for the post-fire environment were statistically significant predictors of post-fire community composition, neither are particularly influential. Our results from the incubation trials indicate that soil carbon fluxes post-wildfire are not likely limited by microbial communities, suggesting strong functional resilience. From these findings, we offer a traits-based framework of bacterial responses to wildfire.

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“…Currently, most research evaluating post‐fire microbiomes is based on single timepoint sampling (Dove & Hart, 2017; Pressler et al, 2019); thus, the succession of pyrophilous microbes is nearly unknown. However, recent research consisting of 2–3 sampling time points suggests that bacteria and fungi experience rapid post‐fire community changes (Ferrenberg et al, 2013; Qin & Liu, 2021; Whitman et al, 2022), indicating that higher temporal resolution sampling is needed to understand bacterial and fungal successional trajectories.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid bacterial and fungal successional dynamics in first year after chaparral wildfire

et al. 2023

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The rise in wildfire frequency and severity across the globe has increased interest in secondary succession. However, despite the role of soil microbial communities in controlling biogeochemical cycling and their role in the regeneration of post-fire vegetation, the lack of measurements immediately post-fire and at high temporal resolution has limited understanding of microbial secondary succession. To fill this knowledge gap, we sampled soils at 17, 25, 34, 67, 95, 131, 187, 286, and 376 days after a southern California wildfire in fire-adapted chaparral shrublands. We assessed bacterial and fungal biomass with qPCR of 16S and 18S and richness and composition with Illumina MiSeq sequencing of 16S and ITS2 amplicons. Fire severely reduced bacterial biomass by 47%, bacterial richness by 46%, fungal biomass by 86%, and fungal richness by 68%. The burned bacterial and fungal communities experienced rapid succession, with 5-6 compositional turnover periods. Analogous to plants, turnover was driven by "fire-loving" pyrophilous microbes, many of which have been previously found in forests worldwide and changed markedly in abundance over time. Fungal secondary succession was initiated by the Basidiomycete yeast Geminibasidium, which traded off against the filamentous Ascomycetes Pyronema, Aspergillus, and Penicillium. For bacteria, the Proteobacteria Massilia dominated all year, but the Firmicute Bacillus and Proteobacteria Noviherbaspirillum increased in abundance over time. Our highresolution temporal sampling allowed us to capture post-fire microbial secondary successional dynamics and suggest that putative tradeoffs in thermotolerance, colonization, and competition among dominant pyrophilous microbes control microbial succession with possible implications for ecosystem function.

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Resilience in soil bacterial communities of the boreal forest from one to five years after wildfire across a severity gradient

Cited by 12 publications

References 88 publications

Substrate and low intensity fires influence bacterial communities in longleaf pine savanna

Substrate and low intensity fires influence bacterial communities in longleaf pine savanna

Experimentally determined traits shape bacterial community composition one and five years following wildfire

Rapid bacterial and fungal successional dynamics in first year after chaparral wildfire

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