Soil microbial sensitivity to temperature remains unchanged despite community compositional shifts along geothermal gradients.

ABSTRACT: Climate warming may be exacerbated if rising temperatures stimulate losses of soil carbon to the atmosphere. The direction and magnitude of this carbon-climate feedback are uncertain, largely due to lack of knowledge of the thermal adaptation of the physiology and composition of soil microbial communities. Here, we applied the macromolecular rate theory (MMRT) to describe the temperature response of the microbial decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) in a natural long-term warming experiment in a geothermally active area in New Zealand. Our objective was to test whether microbial communities adapt to long-term warming with a shift in their composition and their temperature response that are consistent with evolutionary theory of trade-offs between enzyme structure and function. We cha

SUBMITTER: Moinet GYK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9293425 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature