Abstract
Aim
The functioning of soil microbial communities is co-determined by plant community composition and environmental factors. Decreased precipitation predicted in the Mediterranean area will affect both determinants, yet their interplay on soil microbial functioning is poorly understood. Here we assessed the interaction of plant community diversity and reduced precipitation on microbial metabolic activity and diversity in the topsoil of a Mediterranean shrubland in Southern France.
Methods
With a large field experiment using 92 plots that differed in the diversity of the four dominant shrub species (Quercus coccifera, Cistus albidus, Ulex parviflorus, and Rosmarinus officinalis) we manipulated the average precipitation (a mean reduction of 12%) over three years and analyzed the community level physiological profile (MicroResp™) after 7 and 31 months of partial rain exclusion.
Results
Partial rain exclusion had only subtle effects on soil microbial parameters. Soil microbial global metabolic activity and diversity increased with total shrub cover but tended to decrease with shrub diversity under control conditions, relationships that were absent with partial rain exclusion. We showed strong shrub composition control over the soil microbial parameters, with a particularly strong effect of Q. coccifera.
Conclusion
Our results suggest that climate change may have greater impact on soil microbial functioning via shifts in plant community composition rather than through direct effects of reduced precipitation, yet this may depend on how precipitation will change.
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Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the CLIMED research project (contract “ANR-09-CEP-007”) and through a grant of Aleppo University, Syria to AH. We are grateful to all the colleagues from CEFE UMR 5175 and from IMBE UMR 7263 who contributed to the set-up and maintenance of the rain exclusion experiment in Marseille. We especially thank Jean-François David and Mathieu Coulis for soil sampling, Natalia Rodriguez-Ramirez for plant survey, Jean-Philippe Mevy (IMBE) and Cyril Bernard (CEFE) for meteorological data, and Alexandre Clet for his help during MicroResp™ analyses. Litter traits and MicroResp™ analyses were performed at the Plate-Forme d’Analyses Chimiques en Ecologie, LabEx Centre Méditerranéen de l’Environnement et de la Biodiversité, with the help of Bruno Buatois and Clémence Dufresne. Dissolved Carbon and Nitrogen analyses were performed at the Eco&Sols BioSolTrop lab (LabEx Centre Méditerranéen de l’Environnement et de la Biodiversité, Montpellier) with the help of Jean Larvy Delarivière. We kindly thank Sylvain Coq for pre-submission review and comments on the manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.
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Fromin, N., Shihan, A., Santonja, M. et al. Soil microbial activity in a Mediterranean garrigue responds more to changing shrub community than to reduced rainfall. Plant Soil 449, 405–421 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04501-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04501-8