Soil microbial community responses to long-term multifactorial global change in a California annual grassland ecosystem
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Soil microbial communities (SMCs) are important regulators of biogeochemical cycles and plant nutrition in terrestrial ecosystems, but the diversity, composition, and function of SMCs are expected change in response to anthropogenic global change. While field-based, manipulative global change experiments have helped to build a nuanced understanding of plant community responses to multiple interacting environmental changes in a variety of ecosystems, relatively little research has investigated the response of SMCs to similar conditions. To this end, we used next-generation DNA sequencing to assess the soil fungal and bacterial communities in the bulk soil (0–7cm depth) of the Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment: a full-factorial global change experiment that has tested two levels of nitrogen deposition, atmospheric CO2 concentration, temperature, and precipitation in a California annual grassland since 1998. Of the four global change treatments, nitrogen deposition had the strongest effect on the composition of SMCs, and also explained the most variation in fungal richness. Although all individual treatments had significant effects on SMC composition and diversity, treatment interactions in this experiment were infrequent and could only be identified at finer taxonomic scales in the bacterial community. Furthermore, the best covariates for most SMC composition and diversity were usually not the global change factors themselves; SMC properties could be better explained by soil chemical properties that were, in turn, affected by a global change treatment. In particular, fungal and bacterial community composition were the best covariates for each other, suggesting that despite differential effects of global change on fungal and bacterial communities, as a whole their relationship is resilient to global change. Finally, we found a significant decrease in the relative abundance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi under elevated CO2, which has never been described in the literature. Our results support the hypotheses that increased nutrient inputs can cause strong shifts in SMCs in grasslands, and that the ultimate effect of global change factors on SMCs is mediated by changes to the local soil environment.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 2016 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Qin, Kenneth | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Peay, Kabir | |
| Advisor | Dirzo, Rodolfo | |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Biology, 2016 |
Subjects
| Subject | biology |
|---|---|
| Subject | microbial ecology |
| Subject | global change |
| Subject | soil microbial communities |
| Subject | arbuscular mycorrhizae |
| Subject | nitrogen limitation |
| Subject | elevated CO2 |
| Subject | warming |
| Subject | precipitation |
| Subject | grassland |
| Subject | Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-SA).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Qin, Kenneth, Dirzo, Rodolfo, and Peay, Kabir. (2016). Soil microbial community responses to long-term multifactorial global change in a California annual grassland ecosystem. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/gs917cq0813
Collection
Undergraduate Theses, Department of Biology, 2015-2016
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- Contact
- kqin@stanford.edu
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