articleNature CommunicationsJul 5, 2016GOLD OA

Temperature mediates continental-scale diversity of microbes in forest soils

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory · State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control · +7 more institutions

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Abstract

Climate warming is increasingly leading to marked changes in plant and animal biodiversity, but it remains unclear how temperatures affect microbial biodiversity, particularly in terrestrial soils. Here we show that, in accordance with metabolic theory of ecology, taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity of soil bacteria, fungi and nitrogen fixers are all better predicted by variation in environmental temperature than pH. However, the rates of diversity turnover across the global temperature gradients are substantially lower than those recorded for trees and animals, suggesting that the diversity of plant, animal and soil microbial communities show differential responses to climate change. To the best of our…

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