Microbial communities in terrestrial surface soils are not widely limited by carbon

Author:

Cui Yongxing1ORCID,Peng Shushi1ORCID,Delgado‐Baquerizo Manuel23ORCID,Rillig Matthias C.4ORCID,Terrer César5ORCID,Zhu Biao6ORCID,Jing Xin7ORCID,Chen Ji8ORCID,Li Jinquan9ORCID,Feng Jiao10ORCID,He Yue1ORCID,Fang Linchuan11ORCID,Moorhead Daryl L.12ORCID,Sinsabaugh Robert L.13,Peñuelas Josep1415ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Sino‐French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences Peking University Beijing China

2. Laboratorio de Biodiversidad y Funcionamiento Ecosistémico Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla (IRNAS), CSIC Sevilla Spain

3. Unidad Asociada CSIC‐UPO (BioFun). Universidad Pablo de Olavide Sevilla Spain

4. Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin Germany

5. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Boston Massachusetts USA

6. Institute of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, and Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of Education Peking University Beijing China

7. State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro‐Ecosystems, and College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology Lanzhou University Lanzhou Gansu China

8. Department of Agroecology Aarhus University Tjele Denmark

9. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, National Observations and Research Station for Wetland Ecosystems of the Yangtze Estuary Institute of Biodiversity Science and Institute of Eco‐Chongming, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University Shanghai China

10. College of Resources and Environment Huazhong Agricultural University Wuhan China

11. School of Resource and Environmental Engineering Wuhan University of Technology Wuhan China

12. Department of Environmental Sciences University of Toledo Toledo Ohio USA

13. Department of Biology University of New Mexico Albuquerque New Mexico USA

14. CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF‐CSIC‐UAB Bellaterra Catalonia Spain

15. CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallès Catalonia Spain

Abstract

AbstractMicrobial communities in soils are generally considered to be limited by carbon (C), which could be a crucial control for basic soil functions and responses of microbial heterotrophic metabolism to climate change. However, global soil microbial C limitation (MCL) has rarely been estimated and is poorly understood. Here, we predicted MCL, defined as limited availability of substrate C relative to nitrogen and/or phosphorus to meet microbial metabolic requirements, based on the thresholds of extracellular enzyme activity across 847 sites (2476 observations) representing global natural ecosystems. Results showed that only about 22% of global sites in terrestrial surface soils show relative C limitation in microbial community. This finding challenges the conventional hypothesis of ubiquitous C limitation for soil microbial metabolism. The limited geographic extent of C limitation in our study was mainly attributed to plant litter, rather than soil organic matter that has been processed by microbes, serving as the dominant C source for microbial acquisition. We also identified a significant latitudinal pattern of predicted MCL with larger C limitation at mid‐ to high latitudes, whereas this limitation was generally absent in the tropics. Moreover, MCL significantly constrained the rates of soil heterotrophic respiration, suggesting a potentially larger relative increase in respiration at mid‐ to high latitudes than low latitudes, if climate change increases primary productivity that alleviates MCL at higher latitudes. Our study provides the first global estimates of MCL, advancing our understanding of terrestrial C cycling and microbial metabolic feedback under global climate change.

Funder

National Natural Science Foundation of China

Publisher

Wiley

Subject

General Environmental Science,Ecology,Environmental Chemistry,Global and Planetary Change

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