Is extreme weather more detrimental to nutrition cycling in response to climate change? This is the question addressed by Dr. Zhen Bai and his colleagues from Research Group of Soil Fertility and Nutrient Cycling at Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Microbial community structure and activities drive nutrition utilization pathways and thus modify their responses to temperature change. Dr. Bai conducted a 4-month incubation study to reveal how microbially-mediated nutrient processes change between varying (more variable state) and constant (more stable state) temperature settings.

He found a significant and reverse change in temperature adaption of microorganisms between varying vs. constant temperature settings. Adiurnally-varying temperature status caused increases around 17.3-47.5% in the Fungal/Gram-negative, Fungal/Gram-positive and Fungal/Actinomycete ratios from low (10°C) to high (30°C) temperature. In contrast, at constant temperature status, their counterparts either showed a mere increase of 2.3% (Fungal/Gram-negative) or reduced around 50% (Fungal/Gram-positive and Fungal/Actinomycete). The ratios of Gram-positive to Gram-negative bacteria––which always increase under nutrition stress––also showed reverse trends between varying vs. constant status.

The above reverse constant vs. varying temperature changes in microbial community structure and physiological status were strongly interacted with forest stand or the soil horizon.

These findings suggest the effects of extreme conditions (at least low vs. high temperature) on microbially-mediated nutrition cycling and their mechanisms to global warming in situ need to be further examined in experimenting with potential treatments.

These results were published in a top journal of soil science Geoderma entitled “Temperature sensitivity of a PLFA-distinguishable microbial community differs between varying and constant temperature regimes”.

His work was supported by NNSFC and China Soil Micro biome Initiative of the CAS.

Email: yueqian@iae.ac.cn

Publication Name: BAI Zhen et al.