Soil fungal responses to experimental warming and drying in a Mediterranean shrubland

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Science of the Total Environment

ISSN

1879-1026

Volume

683

First Page

524

Last Page

536

PubMed ID

31146058

Publisher

Elsevier BV

School

Centre for Ecosystem Management

RAS ID

28827

Comments

Birnbaum, C., Hopkins, A. J. M., Fontaine, J. B., & Enright, N. J. (2019). Soil fungal responses to experimental warming and drying in a Mediterranean shrubland. Science of the Total Environment, 683, 524-536. Available here

Abstract

Implications of a drying and warming climate have been investigated for aboveground vegetation across a range of biomes yet below-ground effects on microorganisms have received considerably less attention, especially in Mediterranean Type Ecosystems (MTE) that are predicted to be negatively impacted by climate change. We experimentally reduced rainfall and increased temperature across two contrasting study sites (deep sand dune vs shallow sand swale) to test how projected future climate conditions may impact soil fungal composition, richness and diversity. We also assessed fungal OTU warming responses and putative functions of 100 most abundant OTUs and 120 OTUs that either increased or decreased based on their presence/absence across treatments. We found a significant effect of study site, treatment and canopy species on fungal composition. Soil fungal diversity increased under warming treatment in swale plots as compared to control plots indicating a positive effect of warming on fungal diversity. In dunes, significantly more OTUs responded to drought than warming treatment. Among the most abundant soil fungal putative functional groups were endophytes, ericoid mycorrhizas, yeasts and ectomycorrhizas consistent with previous studies. Plant pathogens were found to increase across dunes and swales, while ericoid mycorrhizae decreased. In summary, our study revealed that it is critical to understand belowground microbial patterns as a result of climate change treatments for our ability to better predict how ecosystems may respond to global environmental changes in the future.

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.05.222

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