Earthworms and plants can decrease soil greenhouse gas emissions by modulating soil moisture fluctuations and soil macroporosity in a mesocosm experiment.

Earthworms can stimulate microbial activity and hence greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from soils. However, the extent of this effect in the presence of plants and soil moisture fluctuations, which are influenced by earthworm burrowing activity, remains uncertain. Here, we report the effects of earthworms (without, anecic, endogeic, both) and plants (with, without) on GHG (CO2, N2O) emissions in a 3-month greenhouse mesocosm experiment simulating a simplified agricultural context.

Stoichiometric plasticity of microbial communities is similar between litter and soil in a tropical rainforest.

Heterotrophic microorganisms are commonly thought to be stoichiometrically homeostatic but their stoichiometric plasticity has rarely been examined, particularly in terrestrial ecosystems. Using a fertilization experiment in a tropical rainforest, we evaluated how variable substrate stoichiometry may influence the stoichiometry of microbial communities in the leaf litter layer and in the underlying soil. C:N:P ratios of the microbial biomass were higher in the organic litter layer than in the underlying mineral soil.

The evolution of bacterial cell size: the internal diffusion-constraint hypothesis.

Size is one of the most important biological traits influencing organismal ecology and evolution. However, we know little about the drivers of body size evolution in unicellulars. A long-term evolution experiment (Lenski's LTEE) in which Escherichia coli adapts to a simple glucose medium has shown that not only the growth rate and the fitness of the bacterium increase over time but also its cell size.

Functional breadth and home-field advantage generate functional differences among soil microbial decomposers.

In addition to the effect of litter quality (LQ) on decomposition, increasing evidence is demonstrating that carbon mineralization can be influenced by the past resource history, mainly through following two processes: (1) decomposer communities from recalcitrant litter environments may have a wider functional ability to decompose a wide range of litter species than those originating from richer environments, i.e., the functional breadth (FB) hypothesis; and/or (2) decomposer communities may be specialized towards the litter they most frequently encounter, i.