Dynamics of soil respiration and microbial communities: Interactive controls of temperature and substrate quality

Abstract

Soil microbial communities mediate soil feedbacks to climate; a thorough understanding of their response to increasing temperatures is therefore central to predict climate-induced changes in carbon (C) fluxes. However, it is unclear how microbial communities will change in structure and function in response to temperature change and to the availability of organic C which varies in complexity. Here we present results from a laboratory incubation study in which soil microbial communities were exposed to different temperatures and organic C complexity. Soil samples were collected from two land-use types differing in climatic and edaphic conditions and located in two regions in southwest Germany. Soils amended with cellobiose (CB), xylan, or coniferyl alcohol (CA, lignin precursor) were incubated at 5, 15 or 25 °C. We found that temperature predominantly controlled microbial respiration rates. Increasing temperature stimulated cumulative respiration rates but decreased total microbial biomass (total phospholipid fatty acids, PLFAs) in all substrate amendments. Temperature increase affected fungal biomass more adversely than bacterial biomass and the temperature response of fungal biomass (fungal PLFAs, ergosterol and ITS fragment) depended upon substrate quality. With the addition of CB, temperature response of fungal biomass did not differ from un-amended control soils, whereas addition of xylan and CA shifted the fungal temperature optima from 5 °C to 15 °C. These results provide first evidence that fungi which decompose complex C substrates (CA and xylan) may have different life strategies and temperature optima than fungal communities which decompose labile C substrate (CB). Gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria differed strongly in their capacity to decompose CB under different temperature regimes: gram-positive bacteria had highest PLFA abundance at 5 °C, while gram-negative bacteria were most abundant at 25 °C. Bacterial community composition, as measured by 16S rRNA gene abundance, and PLFAs showed opposite temperature and substrate decomposition trends. Using multivariate statistics, we found a general association of microbial life strategies and key members of the microbial community: oligotrophic Alphaproteobacteria and Acidobacteria were associated with complex substrates and copiotrophic Actinobacteria with labile substrates. Our study provides evidence that the response of C cycling to warming will be mediated by shifts in the structure and function of soil microbial communities.