Soil Metatranscriptomes Under Long-Term Experimental Warming and Drying: Fungi Allocate Resources to Cell Metabolic Maintenance Rather Than Decay

Frontiers in Microbiology

Adriana L. Romero-Olivares¹  Kathleen K. Treseder¹  Germán Meléndrez-Carballo²  Asunción Lago-Lestón³ 

[1] Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States;Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education, Ensenada, Mexico;Department of Medical Innovation, Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education, Ensenada, Mexico;

关键词: metatranscriptome;    tradeoff;    fungi;    soil carbon;    decomposition;    global warming;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmicb.2019.01914

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Earth’s temperature is rising, and with this increase, fungal communities are responding and affecting soil carbon processes. At a long-term soil-warming experiment in a boreal forest in interior Alaska, warming and warming-associated drying alters the function of microbes, and thus, decomposition of carbon. But what genetic mechanisms and resource allocation strategies are behind these community shifts and soil carbon changes? Here, we evaluate fungal resource allocation efforts under long-term experimental warming (including associated drying) using soil metatranscriptomics. We profiled resource allocation efforts toward decomposition and cell metabolic maintenance, and we characterized community composition. We found that under the warming treatment, fungi allocate resources to cell metabolic maintenance at the expense of allocating resources to decomposition. In addition, we found that fungal orders that house taxa with stress-tolerant traits were more abundant under the warmed treatment compared to control conditions. Our results suggest that the warming treatment elicits an ecological tradeoff in resource allocation in the fungal communities, with potential to change ecosystem-scale carbon dynamics. Fungi preferentially invest in mechanisms that will ensure survival under warming and drying, such as cell metabolic maintenance, rather than in decomposition. Through metatranscriptomes, we provide mechanistic insight behind the response of fungi to climate change and consequences to soil carbon processes.

【 授权许可】

Unknown