Climate change is affecting ecosystems on an observed small scale. What makes this article so interesting is that in the studied Mediterrenean environment (MTE), native plants are decreasing and exotic plants are thriving. Although a detrimental consequence, it is still a phenomenal event how a different type of ecosystem is coming into place. The exotic plants can interact with climatic changes to affect soil microbial communities by physically altering soil microclimates and by altering plant-microbe interactions. (Castro, S., Cleland, E., Wagner, R., Sawad, R., Lipson, D. 2019) The main concern in this article is carbon storage and biodiversity. Co-occurring stressors like drought and above ground structures such as litter demote the soil microbe communities. This is an explicit temporal study conducted by controlling the amount of rainfall on the MTE. The experimental plots were classified as Las Posas loam and ironically, the amount of rainfall permitted was via rain shelter and irrigation systems. (Castro, S., Cleland, E., Wagner, R., Sawad, R., Lipson, D. 2019) The microbial biomass carbon was calculated from subtracting the fumigated and non-fumigate samples. The soil microbe DNA was extracted, quantified, and sequenced.
Figure 1a: Both plant communities had a weak yet significant correlation found between micro biomass carbon and gravimetric water content. Substrate induced respiration wasn’t significantly affected by plant type nor rainfall treatment. However it did show a similar long-term decline like micro biomass.
Castro, S., Cleland, E., Wagner, R., Sawad, R., Lipson, D. Soil microbial responses to drought and exotic plants shift carbon metabolism.
ISME J 2019; e-pub ahead of print 14 March 2019, doi: 10.1038/s41396-019-0389-9.
No comments:
Post a Comment