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Soil microbial respiration adapts to ambient temperature in global drylands

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages 232–238 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Heterotrophic soil microbial respiration—one of the main processes of carbon loss from the soil to the atmosphere—is sensitive to temperature in the short term. However, how this sensitivity is affected by long-term thermal regimes is uncertain. There is an expectation that soil microbial respiration rates adapt to the ambient thermal regime, but whether this adaptation magnifies or reduces respiration sensitivities to temperature fluctuations remains unresolved. This gap in understanding is particularly pronounced for drylands because most studies conducted so far have focused on mesic systems. Here, we conduct an incubation study using soil samples from 110 global drylands encompassing a wide gradient in mean annual temperature. We test how mean annual temperature affects soil respiration rates at three assay temperatures while controlling for substrate depletion and microbial biomass. Estimated soil respiration rates at the mean microbial biomass were lower in sites with higher mean annual temperatures across the three assayed temperatures. The patterns observed are consistent with expected evolutionary trade-offs in the structure and function of enzymes under different thermal regimes. Therefore, our results suggest that soil microbial respiration adapts to the ambient thermal regime in global drylands.

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Fig. 1: Expected outcomes of the effect of MAT of the source site on potential soil microbial respiration rates at three assay temperatures under three competing hypotheses.
Fig. 2: Estimated effects of MAT on potential respiration rates at a common microbial biomass value and with substrate in excess.
Fig. 3: Comparison of the estimated effects of MAT on potential respiration rates, at a common microbial biomass value and with substrate in excess, between our model and a model assuming no MAT effect.
Fig. 4: Estimated effects of microsite (vegetated versus open areas) on potential respiration rates at a common microbial biomass value and with substrate in excess.

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Data availability

Data in the support of these findings and the R code for the statistical models are available from Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5777940; https://figshare.com/s/18186211f9f259c4e2b0)

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC)-funded projects BIOCOM (ERC grant no. 242658) and BIODESERT (ERC grant no. 647038), and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (BIOMOD project, grant no. CGL2013-44661-R). M.D. is supported by an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (ref. FPU-15/00392). P.G.P. acknowledges the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for financial support via the Juan de la Cierva Program (grant no. IJCI‐2014‐20058). C.P. acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant no. 654132. We thank D. Mendoza for her help in the laboratory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Biología y Geología, Física y Química Inorgánica, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain

    Marina Dacal, César Plaza, Fernando T. Maestre & Pablo García-Palacios

  2. School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Mark A. Bradford

  3. Instituto de Ciencias Agrarias, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, Spain

    César Plaza

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  1. Marina Dacal
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Contributions

F.T.M. designed the field study and wrote the grant that funded the work. P.G.P and M.D. developed the original idea of the analyses presented in the manuscript. M.D. and C.P. conducted the laboratory work. M.D. conducted the statistical analyses with the help of M.A.B. All authors contributed to data interpretation and manuscript writing.

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Correspondence to Marina Dacal.

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Dacal, M., Bradford, M.A., Plaza, C. et al. Soil microbial respiration adapts to ambient temperature in global drylands. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 232–238 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0770-5

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