Fire affects the taxonomic and functional composition of soil microbial communities, with cascading effects on grassland ecosystem functioning
2020
Yang, Sihang | Zheng, Qiaoshu | Yang, Yunfeng | Yuan, Mengting | Ma, Xingyu | Chiariello, Nona R. | Docherty, Kathryn M. | Field, Christopher B. | Gutknecht, Jessica L. M. | Hungate, Bruce A. | Niboyet, Audrey | Le Roux, Xavier | Zhou, Jizhong | Tsinghua University [Beijing] (THU) | University of Oklahoma (OU) | Department of Global Ecology [Carnegie] (DGE) ; Carnegie Institution for Science | Western Michigan University [Kalamazoo] | Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung = Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) | Northern Arizona University [Flagstaff] | AgroParisTech | Institut d'écologie et des sciences de l'environnement de Paris (iEES Paris) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12 (UPEC UP12)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) | Laboratoire d'Ecologie Microbienne - UMR 5557 (LEM) ; Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL) ; Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Lyon (ENVL)-VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement (VAS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)
Fire is a crucial event regulating the structure and functioning of many ecosystems.Yet few studies have focused on how fire affects taxonomic and functional diversi‐ties of soil microbial communities, along with changes in plant communities and soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics. Here, we analyze these effects in a grasslandecosystem 9 months after an experimental fire at the Jasper Ridge Global ChangeExperiment site in California, USA. Fire altered soil microbial communities con ‐siderably, with community assembly process analysis showing that environmentalselection pressure was higher in burned sites. However, a small subset of highly connected taxa was able to withstand the disturbance. In addition, fire decreasedthe relative abundances of most functional genes associated with C degradationand N cycling, implicating a slowdown of microbial processes linked to soil C and N dynamics. In contrast, fire stimulated above‐ and belowground plant growth, likely enhancing plant–microbe competition for soil inorganic N, which was reduced by a factor of about 2. To synthesize those findings, we performed structural equationmodeling, which showed that plants but not microbial communities were responsi‐ble for significantly higher soil respiration rates in burned sites. Together, our resultsdemonstrate that fire ‘reboots’ the grassland ecosystem by differentially regulating plant and soil microbial communities, leading to significant changes in soil C and N dynamics.
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