Elevated carbon dioxide accelerates the spatial turnover of soil microbial communities

Ye Deng, Zhili He, Jinbo Xiong, Hao Yu, Meiying Xu, Sarah E. Hobbie, Peter B. Reich, Christopher W. Schadt, Angela Kent, Elise Pendall, Matthew Wallenstein, Jizhong Zhou

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    68 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Although elevated CO 2 (eCO 2) significantly affects the α-diversity, composition, function, interaction and dynamics of soil microbial communities at the local scale, little is known about eCO 2 impacts on the geographic distribution of micro-organisms regionally or globally. Here, we examined the β-diversity of 110 soil microbial communities across six free air CO 2 enrichment (FACE) experimental sites using a high-throughput functional gene array. The β-diversity of soil microbial communities was significantly (P < 0.05) correlated with geographic distance under both CO 2 conditions, but declined significantly (P < 0.05) faster at eCO 2 with a slope of -0.0250 than at ambient CO 2 (aCO 2) with a slope of -0.0231 although it varied within each individual site, indicating that the spatial turnover rate of soil microbial communities was accelerated under eCO 2 at a larger geographic scale (e.g. regionally). Both distance and soil properties significantly (P < 0.05) contributed to the observed microbial β-diversity. This study provides new hypotheses for further understanding their assembly mechanisms that may be especially important as global CO 2 continues to increase.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)957-964
    Number of pages8
    JournalGlobal Change Biology
    Volume22
    Issue number2
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2016

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

    Keywords

    • carbon dioxide
    • microbial communities
    • soil microbiology

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Elevated carbon dioxide accelerates the spatial turnover of soil microbial communities'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this