Predicting the responsiveness of soil biodiversity to deforestation: a cross‐biome study

• Published in: Global change biology 2014-09, Vol.20 (9), p.2983-2994
• Main Authors: Crowther, Thomas W, Maynard, Daniel S, Leff, Jonathan W, Oldfield, Emily E, McCulley, Rebecca L, Fierer, Noah, Bradford, Mark A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis of Variance; Animal and plant ecology; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Base Sequence; Biodiversity; Biological and medical sciences; Carbon Dioxide - metabolism; community structure; Conservation of Natural Resources - statistics & numerical data; Deforestation; Ecosystem functioning; ecosystems; Fatty Acids - metabolism; forest communities; Forest soils; Forests; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; grassland soils; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; Linear Models; Metagenomic sequencing; microbial communities; Microbial community; Microbial ecology; Microbiota - genetics; Microorganisms; Molecular Sequence Data; politics; prediction; Puerto Rico; Soil - chemistry; Soil Biodiversity; Soil Microbiology; soil microorganisms; soil texture; Species Specificity; Synecology; Terrestrial ecosystems; United States; Various environments (extraatmospheric space, air, water); vegetation types
• ISSN: 1354-1013; 1365-2486
• DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12565

The consequences of deforestation for aboveground biodiversity have been a scientific and political concern for decades. In contrast, despite being a dominant component of biodiversity that is essential to the functioning of ecosystems, the responses of belowground biodiversity to forest removal have received less attention. Single‐site studies suggest that soil microbes can be highly responsive to forest removal, but responses are highly variable, with negligible effects in some regions. Using high throughput sequencing, we characterize the effects of deforestation on microbial communities across multiple biomes and explore what determines the vulnerability of microbial communities to this vegetative change. We reveal consistent directional trends in the microbial community response, yet the magnitude of this vegetation effect varied between sites, and was explained strongly by soil texture. In sandy sites, the difference in vegetation type caused shifts in a suite of edaphic characteristics, driving substantial differences in microbial community composition. In contrast, fine‐textured soil buffered microbes against these effects and there were minimal differences between communities in forest and grassland soil. These microbial community changes were associated with distinct changes in the microbial catabolic profile, placing community changes in an ecosystem functioning context. The universal nature of these patterns allows us to predict where deforestation will have the strongest effects on soil biodiversity, and how these effects could be mitigated.