Soil microbial diversity–biomass relationships are driven by soil carbon content across global biomes

Abstract

The relationship between biodiversity and biomass has been a long standing debate in ecology. Soil biodiversity and biomass are essential drivers of ecosystem functions. However, unlike plant communities, little is known about how the diversity and biomass of soil microbial communities are interlinked across globally distributed biomes, and how variations in this relationship influence ecosystem function. To fill this knowledge gap, we conducted a field survey across global biomes, with contrasting vegetation and climate types. We show that soil carbon (C) content is associated to the microbial diversity–biomass relationship and ratio in soils across global biomes. This ratio provides an integrative index to identify those locations on Earth wherein diversity is much higher compared with biomass and vice versa. The soil microbial diversity-to-biomass ratio peaks in arid environments with low C content, and is very low in C-rich cold environments. Our study further advances that the reductions in soil C content associated with land use intensification and climate change could cause dramatic shifts in the microbial diversity-biomass ratio, with potential consequences for broad soil processes.

Interactions between soil compositions and the wheat root microbiome under drought stress: From an in silico to in planta perspective

“…The relationship between biomass and community diversity is not unidirectional. Under scarce resources with low biomass, the relationship between the two can be positive, whereas the presence of dominant species under high biomass will reduce the diversity [43] . Both iron and sodium have been linked previously with plant–microbe-soil interactions.…”

Biomass Based Materials in Electrochemical Supercapacitor Applications

“……), animal wastes, urban and cleans [1][2][3]. Biomass resources are of high water and oxygen content, low density, low calorific value; These features negatively affect the quality of loss [4]. The negative properties of biomass can be eliminated by physical processes (size reduction-crushing and grinding, drying, filtration, aggregation) and transformation processes (biochemical and thermochemical processes) [5].…”

“…The negative properties of biomass can be eliminated by physical processes (size reduction-crushing and grinding, drying, filtration, aggregation) and transformation processes (biochemical and thermochemical processes) [5]. Biomass energy stands out with its various advantages such as the ability to be grown almost everywhere, good knowledge of production and conversion technologies, suitability for energy production every time, adequacy of low light intensities, being storable, adequacy of temperatures between 5 and 35°C, being in socioeconomic developments, not creating environmental pollution (Very low NO x and SO 2 emissions), less greenhouse effect formation compared to other energy sources, cream of CO 2 balance in the atmosphere, not causing acid rain [1][2][3][4][5][6].…”

Mixing crop residues induces a synergistic effect on microbial biomass and an additive effect on soil organic matter priming

“…In addition, mixing chemically contrasting crops may provide a greater number of niches for microorganisms to exploit, which allows functionally dissimilar microbial communities to coexist, and thus result in a greater microbial diversity and biomass than might be expected from the average of the individual communities that are supported by monocultures (Chapman and Newman, 2010). Although greater diversity not always linked to greater biomass, a recent meta-analysis found that in temperate regions, where soil is not rich in C, greater microbial diversity is usually associated with greater microbial biomass due to facilitation and niche partitioning by supporting the co-existence of multiple microbial species (Bastida et al, 2021). An increased microbial diversity could increase the probability of including taxa particularly influential in extracellular enzyme production for nutrient mining and SOM degradation through metabolic and co-metabolic processes.…”

“…An increased microbial diversity could increase the probability of including taxa particularly influential in extracellular enzyme production for nutrient mining and SOM degradation through metabolic and co-metabolic processes. Furthermore, an increased microbial biomass could also result in stronger SOM mineralization as a consequence of increased microbial metabolic activity (Bastida et al, 2021). Thus, mixtures of crop residues could enhance the extent to which soil microbial communities mine nutrients for SOM and lead to a greater priming effect.…”