Responses of soil hexapod communities to warming are mediated by microbial carbon and nitrogen in a subarctic grassland
Résumé
Warming in subarctic ecosystems will be two-fold higher compared to lower latitudes under current climate
change projections. While the effects of warming in northern ecosystems on plants and microorganisms have
been extensively studied, the responses of soil fauna have received much less attention, despite their important
role in regulating key soil processes. We analyzed the response of soil hexapod communities in a subarctic
grassland exposed to a natural geothermal gradient in Iceland with increases of +3 and + 6 ◦C above ambient
temperature. We characterized hexapod communities using environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding. We
analyzed the amounts of microbial carbon (Cmic), microbial N (Nmic), dissolved organic C (DOC) and dissolved
organic N (DON) and then assessed whether these variables could help to account for the compositional
dissimilarity of ground hexapod communities across temperatures. The increases in soil temperature did lead to
changes in the composition of hexapod communities. The compositional differences caused by +6 ◦C plots were
correlated with a decrease in Cmic and Nmic, soil DOC and DON. Our results highlight the response of soil
hexapods to warming, and their interaction with microbial biomass ultimately correlated with changes in the
availabilities of soil C and N.
Origine | Publication financée par une institution |
---|---|
licence |