DMCA
Plant Communities, Soil Microorganisms, and Soil Carbon Cycling: Does Altering the World Belowground Matter to Ecosystem Functioning?
| Citations: | 13 - 0 self |
BibTeX
@MISC{Carney_plantcommunities,,
author = {Karen M. Carney and Pamela A. Matson},
title = {Plant Communities, Soil Microorganisms, and Soil Carbon Cycling: Does Altering the World Belowground Matter to Ecosystem Functioning?},
year = {}
}
Share
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
OpenURL
Abstract
Soil microorganisms mediate many critical ecosys-tem processes. Little is known, however, about the factors that determine soil microbial community composition, and whether microbial community composition influences process rates. Here, we investigated whether aboveground plant diversity affects soil microbial community composition, and whether differences in microbial communities in turn affect ecosystem process rates. Using an exper-imental system at La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica, we found that plant diversity (plots contained 1, 3, 5, or> 25 plant species) had a significant effect on microbial community composition (as deter-mined by phospholipid fatty acid analysis). The dif-ferent microbial communities had significantly different respiration responses to 24 labile carbon compounds. We then tested whether these differ-ences in microbial composition and catabolic capa-bilities were indicative of the ability of distinct microbial communities to decompose different types of litter in a fully factorial laboratory litter transplant experiment. Both microbial biomass and microbial community composition appeared to play a role in litter decomposition rates. Our work suggests, however, that the more important mechanism through which changes in plant diversity affect soil microbial communities and their carbon cycling activities may be through alterations in their abun-dance rather than their community composition. Key words: biodiversity; microbial community; carbon cycling; decomposition; enzyme activity; PLFA; catabolic potential; tropics; La Selva Biolog-ical station.
Keyphrases
microbial community composition soil microorganism soil carbon cycling plant community world belowground matter microbial community plant diversity different respiration response transplant experiment important mechanism microbial composition factorial laboratory distinct microbial community phospholipid fatty acid analysis significant effect catabolic potential turn affect ecosystem process rate soil microbial community soil microbial community composition litter decomposition rate carbon cycling exper-imental system community composition costa rica carbon cycling activity catabolic capa-bilities process rate labile carbon compound dif-ferent microbial community microbial biomass la selva biolog-ical station different type key word many critical ecosys-tem process plant specie la selva biological station aboveground plant diversity
