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Microbial Ecology of Hot Desert Soils

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Microbiology of Hot Deserts

Part of the book series: Ecological Studies ((ECOLSTUD,volume 244))

Abstract

Deserts are one of the major terrestrial biomes on Earth and, with the impacts of global climate change, are expanding. Given the fact that over two billion humans currently live in dryland areas, understanding how these major ecosystems function is particularly important. The poly-extreme environmental conditions of deserts, particularly (hyper)aridity, (hyper)oligotrophy, and high temperatures, limit the distribution and density of higher organisms, particularly plants. As a result, indigenous microbial communities in hot deserts are the dominant sources of primary productivity and other critical ecosystem services.

Counterintuitively, hot desert surface soils, which are exposed to the harshest of abiotic conditions, exhibit high phylogenetic and functional microbial diversity. Independent of geographical localization, these soil communities are dominated by members of the bacterial Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria phyla. Furthermore, community assembly is primarily driven by deterministic niche-partitioning and habitat-filtration processes, with evidence that biotic interactions also play a role. The functionality of desert soil communities is highly water dependent. However, despite the observations that these communities are strongly activated by water input, there is evidence that desert soil microbiomes retain functionality during dry periods, particularly driven toward nutrient and energy acquisition. Together, these studies clearly confirm that hot desert soil microbial communities are well adapted to water scarcity, oligotrophy, and resource patchiness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento Genética Molecular y Microbiología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Jean-Baptiste Ramond

  2. Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics, Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Jean-Baptiste Ramond & Don A. Cowan

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  1. Departamento de Genética Molecular y Microbiología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Jean-Baptiste Ramond

  2. Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics - Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Don A. Cowan

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Ramond, JB., Cowan, D.A. (2022). Microbial Ecology of Hot Desert Soils. In: Ramond, JB., Cowan, D.A. (eds) Microbiology of Hot Deserts. Ecological Studies, vol 244. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98415-1_4

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