Responses of Soil Ammonia Oxidizers to Simulated Warming and Increased Precipitation in a Temperate Steppe of Inner Mongolia

Soil ammonia oxidizers, as key players for the ammonia oxidation process in soil N cycling, could respond, adapt, and give feedback to global change. In this research, soil samples were collected from a long-term field experiment with increased precipitation and warming in a temperate steppe of Inner Mongolia. We analyzed the responses of the abundance, diversity, and community structure of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) to warming and increased precipitation using quantitative real-time PCR, terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP), and clone library. The results showed that increased precipitation significantly stimulated soil pH and warming significantly reduced soil respiration (SR). No significant difference was detected regarding the abundances of amoA genes across all treatments, whereas increased precipitation significantly affected the community structure of soil AOB. However, the interactive effect between warming and increased precipitation had no significant influence on the community structure of soil ammonia oxidizers. The result of the structural equation model indicated that the plant diversity and community structures of soil ammonia oxidizers were significantly correlated, suggesting that there were certain relationships among climate change, microbes, and plants. In conclusion, this study confirmed that soil microorganisms had the ability to adapt to climate change, which could provide important information for predicting future changes in ecosystems.