Microbial legacies alter decomposition in response to simulated global change.

ABSTRACT: Terrestrial ecosystem models assume that microbial communities respond instantaneously, or are immediately resilient, to environmental change. Here we tested this assumption by quantifying the resilience of a leaf litter community to changes in precipitation or nitrogen availability. By manipulating composition within a global change experiment, we decoupled the legacies of abiotic parameters versus that of the microbial community itself. After one rainy season, more variation in fungal composition could be explained by the original microbial inoculum than the litterbag environment (18% versus 5.5% of total variation). This compositional legacy persisted for 3 years, when 6% of the variability in fungal composition was still explained by the microbial origin. In contrast, bacterial composi

SUBMITTER: Martiny JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5270563 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature