Reduction of microbial diversity in grassland soil is driven by long-term climate warming

Soil microbes control the cycling of carbon, but how these communities will respond to climate changes is unknown. Here, 7 years of artificial warming decreased microbial richness and diversity, driven mostly by soil moisture loss. Anthropogenic climate change threatens ecosystem functioning. Soil biodiversity is essential for maintaining the health of terrestrial systems, but how climate change affects the richness and abundance of soil microbial communities remains unresolved. We examined the effects of warming, altered precipitation and annual biomass removal on grassland soil bacterial, fungal and protistan communities over 7 years to determine how these representative climate changes impact microbial biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. We show that experimental warming and the concomitant reductions in soil moisture play a predominant role in shaping microbial biodiversity by decreasing the richness of bacteria (9.6%), fungi (14.5%) and protists (7.5%). Our results also show positive associations between microbial biodiversity and ecosystem functional processes, such as gross primary productivity and microbial biomass. We conclude that the detrimental effects of biodiversity loss might be more severe in a warmer world.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates the negative effects of anthropogenic warming and decreased soil moisture on soil microbial diversity, and also reveals a positive correlation between microbial diversity and ecosystem functioning.