title: The microbiomes and metagenomes of forest biochars.
abstract: Biochar particles have been hypothesized to provide unique microhabitats for a portion of the soil microbial community, but few studies have systematically compared biochar communities to bulk soil communities. Here, we used a combination of sequencing techniques to assess the taxonomic and functional characteristics of microbial communities in four-year-old biochar particles and in adjacent soils across three forest environments. Though effects varied between sites, the microbial community living in and around the biochar particles had significantly lower prokaryotic diversity and higher eukaryotic diversity than the surrounding soil. In particular, the biochar bacterial community had proportionally lower abundance of Acidobacteria, Planctomycetes, and β-Proteobacteria taxa, compared to the soil, while the eukaryotic biochar community had an 11% higher contribution of protists belonging to the Aveolata superphylum. Additionally, we were unable to detect a consistent biochar effect on the genetic functional potential of these microbial communities for the subset of the genetic data for which we were able to assign functions through MG-RAST. Overall, these results show that while biochar particles did select for a unique subset of the biota found in adjacent soils, effects on the microbial genetic functional potential appeared to be specific to contrasting forest soil environments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.|Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Genevieve L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Noyce
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Carolyn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Winsborough
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Roberta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fulthorpe
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada.|Department of Biology and the Vale Living with Lakes Centre, Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Nathan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Basiliko
mesh_terms: D061271:Acidobacteria / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D020562:Betaproteobacteria / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D002606:Charcoal / Q000032:analysis*; D065928:Forests; D054892:Metagenome; D064307:Microbiota; D061328:Planctomycetales / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*; D012988:Soil Microbiology
chemical_list: C540010:biochar; D002606:Charcoal