Functional diversity of soil microbial communities increases with ecosystem development

Nature Communications, vol. 16, pp. 10408

Abstract

Land abandonment is the single largest process of land-use change in the Global North driving succession and afforestation at continental scales, but assessing its impacts on soil microbial communities remains a challenge. Here, we establish a nationwide successional gradient of paired grassland and forest sites to track developments in microbial structure and functioning following land abandonment and gradual land-use change to forests. We show that microbes generally respond through threshold dynamics, leading to increasing functional but decreasing taxonomic diversity. Succession also entailed specialization of microbial nutrient (C-N-P) cycling genetic repertoires while decreasing genetic redundancy. This highlights a putative trade-off between two desirable ecosystem properties: functional diversity and functional redundancy. Fungal functional diversity underpins higher microbial C-cycling capacity, underscoring the link between functional traits and ecosystem processes. Changing litter quality similarly provides a mechanistic link between plant and microbial communities despite otherwise largely decoupled successional developments above- and belowground. While land abandonment is frequently touted as an opportunity to increase biodiversity and carbon storage, our results show that deeper knowledge about the multifaceted development of soil microbial communities and their links to plant communities during succession may be needed to fully grasp the impacts of global land abandonment processes.

Authors 12

1. Tord Ranheim Sveen corresponding

   Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ulls väg 16, Uppsala, Sweden. tord.ranheim.sveen@slu.se

2. Maria Viketoft

   Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ulls väg 16, Uppsala, Sweden

3. Jan Bengtsson

   Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ulls väg 16, Uppsala, Sweden

4. Joachim Strengbom

   Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ulls väg 16, Uppsala, Sweden

5. Justine D.M. Lejoly

   Netherlands Institute of Ecology

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, PO Box 50, 6700 AB, Wageningen, The Netherlands

6. Franz Buegger

   Helmholtz Munich

   Affiliation as printed

   Research Unit for Environmental Simulation, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Ingolstaedter Landstraße 1, D - 85764, Neuherberg, Germany

7. Karin Pritsch

   Helmholtz Munich

   Affiliation as printed

   Research Unit for Environmental Simulation, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Ingolstaedter Landstraße 1, D - 85764, Neuherberg, Germany

8. Joachim Fritscher

   Norwich Research Park · Quadram Institute

   Affiliation as printed

   Gut Health and Microbes Program, Quadram Institute, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, UK

9. Falk Hildebrand

   University of East Anglia · Norwich Research Park · Quadram Institute · Earlham Institute

   Affiliation as printed

   Decoding Biodiversity, Earlham Institute, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, UK

   Gut Health and Microbes Program, Quadram Institute, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, UK

   University of East Anglia, School of Biological Science, Norwich, UK

10. Ernest D. Osburn

    University of Kentucky

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

11. S. Emilia Hannula Aachen Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)

    Leiden University · Netherlands Institute of Ecology

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, PO Box 50, 6700 AB, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

12. Mohammad Bahram

    Aarhus University · Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences · University of Tartu

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Slagelse, Denmark

    Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ulls väg 16, Uppsala, Sweden

    Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia