Responses of soil microbial populations and communities to chronic climate change treatments at the Buxton Climate Change Impacts Lab
There is an urgent need to understand the responses of plant communities to climate change and the role of both ecological and evolutionary processes in those responses. It is well understood that the functioning of plant communities depends crucially on the soil microbial communities with which they interact. However, we know very little about how either climate-driven shifts in soil microbial community structure, or climate-driven evolution alter plant–soil interactions and associated ecosystem functions. This project addresses this critical issue using samples from a unique, long-term climate change experiment (the Buxton Climate Change Impacts Lab), and associated experimental evolution studies. The sequencing resources archived here support our understanding of (i) how chronic climate change modifies soil microbial community structure in grasslands, and (ii) how climate change drives evolutionary adaptation within soil microbes.