Publications by authors named "Xiao Jun A Liu"
Soil carbon loss is likely to increase due to climate warming, but microbiomes and microenvironments may dampen this effect. In a 30-year warming experiment, physical protection within soil aggregates affected the thermal responses of soil microbiomes and carbon dynamics. In this study, we combined metagenomic analysis with physical characterization of soil aggregates to explore mechanisms by which microbial communities respond to climate warming across different soil microenvironments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnravelling biosphere feedback mechanisms is crucial for predicting the impacts of global warming. Soil priming, an effect of fresh plant-derived carbon (C) on native soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition, is a key feedback mechanism that could release large amounts of soil C into the atmosphere. However, the impacts of climate warming on soil priming remain elusive.
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- The study examines how life history strategies, particularly the copiotroph-oligotroph framework, can predict bacterial growth rates in different soil ecosystems.
- Researchers measured bacterial responses to glucose and ammonium to see how well these groups sorted bacteria based on their nutrient use.
- Results showed significant nutrient response overlap among bacterial taxa, indicating that finer taxonomic classifications (like genus) are more effective than broad classifications (like phylum) in understanding microbial growth patterns in varying soil conditions.
Article Synopsis
- Nutrient amendments reduced the diversity of bacteria in soil, causing carbon flow to be dominated by fewer bacterial types.
- Different bacterial groups were found to play distinct roles in respiration across four ecosystems, suggesting that specific taxa could control soil carbon cycling.
- The study highlights the importance of understanding carbon flow through specific bacteria to improve soil carbon models, which could help refine predictions related to climate change.*
Soils represent the largest terrestrial reservoir of organic carbon, and the balance between soil organic carbon (SOC) formation and loss will drive powerful carbon-climate feedbacks over the coming century. To date, efforts to predict SOC dynamics have rested on pool-based models, which assume classes of SOC with internally homogenous physicochemical properties. However, emerging evidence suggests that soil carbon turnover is not dominantly controlled by the chemistry of carbon inputs, but rather by restrictions on microbial access to organic matter in the spatially heterogeneous soil environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEmpirical evidence for the response of soil carbon cycling to the combined effects of warming, drought and diversity loss is scarce. Microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) plays a central role in regulating the flow of carbon through soil, yet how biotic and abiotic factors interact to drive it remains unclear. Here, we combine distinct community inocula (a biotic factor) with different temperature and moisture conditions (abiotic factors) to manipulate microbial diversity and community structure within a model soil.
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- Organisms, including microorganisms, play a critical role in shaping ecosystems through various processes such as nutrient cycling and energy distribution.
- A study reveals that the growth and carbon assimilation rates of soil microorganisms are more significantly impacted by evolutionary history than by environmental factors like climate, across different ecosystems.
- Taxonomic differences among microorganisms account for a large portion of variability in their growth and carbon uptake, indicating that traits are largely constrained by their evolutionary background rather than environmental changes.
Article Synopsis
- Laboratory measurements of bacterial growth often do not predict growth rates in natural soil environments, indicating a disconnect between genomic traits and ecological performance.
- In response to resource addition, growth rates were influenced by the number of 16S rRNA gene copies and genome size, showing that these genomic traits can affect performance under specific conditions.
- The study emphasizes that genomic traits related to stress tolerance may be more important in natural soils, highlighting the need for direct measurements to better understand the link between microbial genes and ecosystem function.