Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 17, Issue 10, Pages 1202-1210Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/ele.12324
Keywords
Allocation; biogeochemistry; carbon cycling; ecosystem ecology; microbial ecology; nitrogen cycling
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program [DGE-1110007]
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Allocation trade-offs shape ecological and biogeochemical phenomena at local to global scale. Plant allocation strategies drive major changes in ecosystem carbon cycling. Microbial allocation to enzymes that decompose carbon vs. organic nutrients may similarly affect ecosystem carbon cycling. Current solutions to this allocation problem prioritise stoichiometric tradeoffs implemented in plant ecology. These solutions may not maximise microbial growth and fitness under all conditions, because organic nutrients are also a significant carbon resource for microbes. I created multiple allocation frameworks and simulated microbial growth using a microbial explicit biogeochemical model. I demonstrate that prioritising stoichiometric trade-offs does not optimise microbial allocation, while exploiting organic nutrients as carbon resources does. Analysis of continental-scale enzyme data supports the allocation patterns predicted by this framework, and modelling suggests large deviations in soil C loss based on which strategy is implemented. Therefore, understanding microbial allocation strategies will likely improve our understanding of carbon cycling and climate.
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