Environmental Drivers of Microbial Functioning in Mediterranean Forest Soils
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SOIL MICROBIOLOGY
Environmental Drivers of Microbial Functioning in Mediterranean Forest Soils Caroline Brunel 1,2
&
Anne-Marie Farnet Da Silva 1
&
Raphael Gros 1
Received: 12 December 2019 / Accepted: 24 April 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Mediterranean forests own distinct characteristics resulting from climate, soil, and vegetation that affect soil microbial communities’ assembly and their associated functions. We initiated a multi-scalar analysis of environmental drivers of soil functioning to (1) identify pertinent factorial scales and (2) determine the relative importance of soil, vegetation, and geoclimate influences in shaping soil microbial functions across the French Mediterranean forests. Soil samples (0–15 cm) were collected from 60 forest sites and soil physicochemical and microbiological properties were assessed across different factorial scales i.e., bioclimates, slope exposures, and forest stands. Patterns in microbial catabolic potential (i.e., extracellular enzymes and microbial respiration) and carbon (C) source utilization (i.e., catabolic-level physiological profiling) were partitioned between vegetation cover, soil characteristics, and geoclimate components. Our results reveal that the catabolic potential of soil microbes was strongly influenced by the forest stands and mainly relied on ammonium and nitrate contents. In contrast, variation in C source utilization was mainly explained by vegetation cover. Soil metabolic capacities of microorganisms and resulting C dynamics were largely constrained by climate parameters, which suggests potentially important consequences for soil C storage. Our study revealed diverse structuration patterns between the catabolic potential and the carbon source utilization of soil microbial communities, and gives insights into the underlying mechanisms of soil microbial functioning in Mediterranean forests. Keywords Ecological filters . Mediterranean forest stands . Microbial metabolism . Scale-dependent structuration . Soil microbial communities . Soil physicochemical properties
Introduction Studies of the microbial processes involved in the decomposition of soil organic carbon (C) have considerably increased in recent years owing to the major role soil C storage plays in the context of climate change [1]. In the C sink that forest soils represent [2], soil organic C stocks result largely from the Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-020-01518-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Caroline Brunel [email protected] 1
Mediterranean Institute of Marine and Continental Biodiversity and Ecology, IMBE, Aix Marseille Université, UMR CNRS 7263, IRD, Avignon Université, Campus l’Etoile, Av. Escadrille Normandie Niemen, 13397, Cedex 20 Marseille, France
2
IRD, IPME, 911 Avenue Agropolis, BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier, France
balance between (i) inputs of C determined by the vegetation cover, (ii) processe
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