Climate warming accelerates temporal scaling of grassland soil microbial biodiversity

Authors: GUO, XUE - Central South University; ZHOU, XISHU - Central South University; Hale, Lauren; YUAN, MENTING - University Of Oklahoma; NING, DALIANG - University Of Oklahoma; FENG, JIAJIE - University Of Oklahoma; SHI, ZHOU - University Of Oklahoma; LI, ZHENXIN - University Of Oklahoma; FENG, BEN - University Of Oklahoma; GAO, QUN - University Of Oklahoma; WU, LINWEI - University Of Oklahoma; SHI, WEILING - University Of Oklahoma; ZHOU, AIFEN - University Of Oklahoma; FU, YING - University Of Oklahoma; WU, LIYOU - University Of Oklahoma; HE, ZHILI - University Of Oklahoma; VAN NOSTRAND, JOY - University Of Oklahoma; QIU, GUANZHOU - Central South University; LIU, XUEDUAN - Central South University; LUO, YIQI - University Of Oklahoma; TIEDJE, JAMES - Michigan State University; YANG, YUNFENG - Tsinghua University; ZHOU, JIZHONG - University Of Oklahoma

Submitted to: Nature Ecology and Evolution
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/8/2019
Publication Date: 3/25/2019
Citation: Guo, X., Zhou, X., Hale, L.E., Yuan, M., Ning, D., Feng, J., Shi, Z., Li, Z., Feng, B., Gao, Q., Wu, L., Shi, W., Zhou, A., Fu, Y., Wu, L., He, Z., Van Nostrand, J.D., Qiu, G., Liu, X., Luo, Y., Tiedje, J.M., Yang, Y., Zhou, J. 2019. Climate warming accelerates temporal scaling of grassland soil microbial biodiversity. Nature Ecology and Evolution. 3:612-619. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0848-8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0848-8

Interpretive Summary: Soil microorganisms are key drivers of processes essential for soil and environmental health, e.g. nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and soil organic matter turnover. However, the lack of connectivity between multiple climate change factors and soil microbial communities lends to misinformed resource management. This original research demonstrated that soil warming by three degrees Celsius consistently enhanced the temporal divergence of both bacterial and fungal communities, as did altered precipitation and biomass harvest, to a lesser extent. The research finding is pivotal for designing temporal sampling strategies for modeling the relationship between microbial diversity and ecosystem functions and indicates potential functional instability of microbial communities impacted by climate change stressors, as faster biodiversity changes could result in inconsistent ecosystem functions and services.

Technical Abstract: Determining temporal scaling of biodiversity, typically described as species-time relationships (STRs), in the face of global climate change is a central issue in ecology because it is fundamental to biodiversity preservation and ecosystem management. However, STRs in microbial communities remain poorly understood mainly due to the lack of long-term time-series data. Despite recent intensive efforts on studying microbial responses to climate warming, whether and how climate warming affects microbial STRs remains unclear. Here, we examined species-time relationships and phylogenetic time relationships (PTRs, phylogeny-based) of soil bacteria and fungi in a long-term multifactor global change experiment with warming (+3 °C), half precipitation (-50%), double precipitation (+100%) and clipping (annual biomass removal). Soil bacteria and fungi all exhibited strong STRs and PTRs across the twelve experimental conditions. Strikingly, warming accelerated bacterial and fungal STR and PTR exponents (i.e., w values), yielding significantly (p < 0.001) higher temporal scaling rates. While STRs and PTRs were significantly shifted by altered precipitation, clipping and their combinations, warming played the predominant role. In addition, although substantial amounts of variations were observed among different lineages, comparison with previous literatures revealed that soil bacteria and fungi had considerably higher overall temporal scaling rates (w = 0.39~0.64) than those of plants and animals (w = 0.21~0.38). Interestingly, phylogenetic scaling rates are consistently lower than taxonomic scaling rates, likely owing to the short experimental periods that were insufficient for rapid phylogenetic changes and/or the regional species pools of low phylogenetic diversity. Our results on warming-enhanced temporal scaling of microbial biodiversity imply that the strategies of soil biodiversity preservation and ecosystem managements may require adjustments in a warmer world.