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Climate warming leads to divergent succession of grassland microbial communities

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 813–818 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Accurate climate projections require an understanding of the effects of warming on ecological communities and the underlying mechanisms that drive them1,2,3. However, little is known about the effects of climate warming on the succession of microbial communities4,5. Here we examined the temporal succession of soil microbes in a long-term climate change experiment at a tall-grass prairie ecosystem. Experimental warming was found to significantly alter the community structure of bacteria and fungi. By determining the time-decay relationships and the paired differences of microbial communities under warming and ambient conditions, experimental warming was shown to lead to increasingly divergent succession of the soil microbial communities, with possibly higher impacts on fungi than bacteria. Variation partition- and null model-based analyses indicate that stochastic processes played larger roles than deterministic ones in explaining microbial community taxonomic and phylogenetic compositions. However, in warmed soils, the relative importance of stochastic processes decreased over time, indicating a potential deterministic environmental filtering elicited by warming. Although successional trajectories of microbial communities are difficult to predict under future climate change scenarios, their composition and structure are projected to be less variable due to warming-driven selection.

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Fig. 1: The TDRs of fungal and bacterial communities under warming and control conditions.
Fig. 2: TDR values of microbial communities among different phylogenetic groups under warming and control.
Fig. 3: Temporal change in community differences between warming and control conditions.
Fig. 4: Overall community stochasticity under warming and control conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Genomic Science Program under award numbers DE-SC0004601 and DE-SC0010715, the National Science Foundation of China (no. 41430856) and the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma. X.G. and X.Z. were generously supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Xue Guo, Jiajie Feng, Zhou Shi

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Minerals Processing and Bioengineering, Central South University, Changsha, China

    Xue Guo, Xishu Zhou & Xueduan Liu

  2. Institute for Environmental Genomics, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    Xue Guo, Jiajie Feng, Zhou Shi, Xishu Zhou, Mengting Yuan, Xuanyu Tao, Lauren Hale, Tong Yuan, Jianjun Wang, Yujia Qin, Aifen Zhou, Ying Fu, Liyou Wu, Zhili He, Joy D. Van Nostrand, Daliang Ning, Yunfeng Yang & Jizhong Zhou

  3. Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    Xue Guo, Jiajie Feng, Zhou Shi, Mengting Yuan, Xuanyu Tao, Lauren Hale, Tong Yuan, Jianjun Wang, Yujia Qin, Aifen Zhou, Ying Fu, Liyou Wu, Zhili He, Joy D. Van Nostrand, Daliang Ning, Yiqi Luo & Jizhong Zhou

  4. State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Xue Guo, Daliang Ning, Yunfeng Yang & Jizhong Zhou

  5. Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Mengting Yuan

  6. Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    Yiqi Luo

  7. Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Yiqi Luo

  8. Center for Microbial Ecology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    James M. Tiedje

  9. School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    Jizhong Zhou

  10. Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Jizhong Zhou

Authors
  1. Xue Guo
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Contributions

All authors contributed intellectual input and assistance to this study and manuscript preparation. The original concept and experimental strategy were developed by J.Z., Y.L. and J.M.T. Field management was carried out by J.F., M.Y., Z.S., X.Z., X.G., T.Y., L.W., J.W., A.Z. and J.D.V.N. Sampling collections, DNA preparation and MiSeq sequencing analysis were carried out by X.G., J.F., X.Z., M.Y., X.T., Y.F. and L.H. Soil chemical analysis was carried out by X.Z. Various statistical analyses were carried by X.G., Z.S., D.N., Y.Q. and M.Y. Assistance in data interpretation was provided by X.L., Y.Y. and Z.H. All data analysis and integration were guided by J.Z. The paper was written by J.Z. and X.G. with help from Z.H., Y.Y., L.H. and J.M.T.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yunfeng Yang or Jizhong Zhou.

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Supplementary figures 1–11, Supplementary tables 1–8

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Guo, X., Feng, J., Shi, Z. et al. Climate warming leads to divergent succession of grassland microbial communities. Nature Clim Change 8, 813–818 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0254-2

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