title: Evidence of microbial regulation of biogeochemical cycles from a study on methane flux and land use change.
abstract: Microbes play an essential role in ecosystem functions, including carrying out biogeochemical cycles, but are currently considered a black box in predictive models and all global biodiversity debates. This is due to (i) perceived temporal and spatial variations in microbial communities and (ii) lack of ecological theory explaining how microbes regulate ecosystem functions. Providing evidence of the microbial regulation of biogeochemical cycles is key for predicting ecosystem functions, including greenhouse gas fluxes, under current and future climate scenarios. Using functional measures, stable-isotope probing, and molecular methods, we show that microbial (community diversity and function) response to land use change is stable over time. We investigated the change in net methane flux and associated microbial communities due to afforestation of bog, grassland, and moorland. Afforestation resulted in the stable and consistent enhancement in sink of atmospheric methane at all sites. This change in function was linked to a niche-specific separation of microbial communities (methanotrophs). The results suggest that ecological theories developed for macroecology may explain the microbial regulation of the methane cycle. Our findings provide support for the explicit consideration of microbial data in ecosystem/climate models to improve predictions of biogeochemical cycles.
authors.affiliation: Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, University of Western Sydney, Penrith South, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Loïc
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nazaries
authors.forename: Yao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.forename: Levente
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bodrossy
authors.forename: Elizabeth M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Baggs
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Millard
authors.forename: J Colin
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Murrell
authors.forename: Brajesh K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Singh
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D057231:Climate Change; D004463:Ecology; D017753:Ecosystem; D008697:Methane / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D046228:Microarray Analysis; D008827:Microbiological Phenomena; D008954:Models, Biological; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D012606:Scotland; D012987:Soil / Q000032:analysis; D014197:Trees
chemical_list: D012987:Soil; D008697:Methane