Microbial activity in forest soil reflects the changes in ecosystem properties between summer and winter
Understanding the ecology of coniferous forests is very important because these environments represent globally largest carbon sinks. Metatranscriptomics, microbial community and enzyme analyses were combined to describe the detailed role of microbial taxa in the functioning of the Picea abies‐domin...
Saved in:
| Published in | Environmental microbiology Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 288 - 301 |
|---|---|
| Main Authors | , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
England
Blackwell Science
01.01.2016
Blackwell Publishing Ltd Wiley Subscription Services, Inc |
| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
| Summary: | Understanding the ecology of coniferous forests is very important because these environments represent globally largest carbon sinks. Metatranscriptomics, microbial community and enzyme analyses were combined to describe the detailed role of microbial taxa in the functioning of the Picea abies‐dominated coniferous forest soil in two contrasting seasons. These seasons were the summer, representing the peak of plant photosynthetic activity, and late winter, after an extended period with no photosynthate input. The results show that microbial communities were characterized by a high activity of fungi especially in litter where their contribution to microbial transcription was over 50%. Differences in abundance between summer and winter were recorded for 26–33% of bacterial genera and < 15% of fungal genera, but the transcript profiles of fungi, archaea and most bacterial phyla were significantly different among seasons. Further, the seasonal differences were larger in soil than in litter. Most importantly, fungal contribution to total microbial transcription in soil decreased from 33% in summer to 16% in winter. In particular, the activity of the abundant ectomycorrhizal fungi was reduced in winter, which indicates that plant photosynthetic production was likely one of the major drivers of changes in the functioning of microbial communities in this coniferous forest. |
|---|---|
| Bibliography: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.13026 Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic - No. LD12048; No. LD12050 ArticleID:EMI13026 Czech Science Foundation - No. P504/12/0709; No. 13-06763S ark:/67375/WNG-FPHT9XCJ-X Fig. S1. Daily mean air and soil temperatures in the Picea abies forest and the view of the sampling sites at the time of sample collection. Fig. S2. The ratio of sequences of the most abundant fungal and bacterial genera derived from RNA and DNA in the Picea abies forest litter and soil in summer and winter. Bacterial RNA/DNA ratio was calculated as a ratio of 16S rRNA (ribosomes) and bacterial genome counts estimated by 16S sequencing. Fungal RNA/DNA ratio represents the ratio of the ITS2 sequence abundance in PCR amplicons derived from RNA (transcripts leading to rRNA synthesis) and DNA (rDNA copies). Table S1. Diversity of bacterial and fungal rDNA and rRNA sequences obtained from Picea abies forest litter and soil. The data were obtained for a sampling depth of 1250 sequences per sample and represent means and standard errors. Significant differences are indicated by different letters (Mann-Whitney U-test, P < 0.05). Table S2. Overview of the abundance of bacterial taxa in a Picea abies forest litter and soil in summer and winter (mean abundance > 0.5%) based on 16S amplicon sequencing. The data are means of data from six sites and represent estimated relative abundances of bacterial genome counts (for DNA) or rRNA molecules (for RNA). Statistically significant differences in abundance between horizons or between seasons within a horizon are indicated in bold script. Bacterial phyla/classes: Aci - Acidobacteria, Act - Actinobacteria, Alp - Alphaproteobacteria, Arm - Armatimonadetes, Bac - Bacteroidetes, Bet - Betaproteobacteria, Del - Deltaproteobacteria, Fir - Firmicutes, Gam - Gammaproteobacteria, Pla - Planctomycetes, Ver - Verrucomicrobia. Table S3. Overview of the abundance of fungal taxa in a Picea abies forest litter and soil in summer and winter (mean abundance > 0.5%) based on ITS amplicon sequencing. The data are means of data from six sites and represent relative abundances of ITS2 sequences derived from DNA and RNA respectively. Statistically significant differences in abundance between horizons or between seasons within a horizon are indicated in bold script. Fungal divisions/subdivisions: A - Ascomycota, B - Basidiomycota, M - Mortierellomycotina; ecology: ECM - ectomycorrhizal, ERM - ericoid mycorrhizal, SAP - nonmycorrhizal. Table S4. Assignment to metatranscriptomic contigs and reads from Picea abies forest litter and soil to microbial taxa. The data represent means and standard errors of six replicates for each horizon and season. Differences among pairs of treatments were tested for statistical significance using Mann-Whitney U-test, differences at P < 0.05 are indicated in bold script. Relative contributions of fungi, archaea and bacteria are expressed as a share of all microbial reads, relative contributions of bacterial phyla as a share of all bacterial reads. Table S5. Relative abundance KEGG all reads: Assignment of identified metatranscriptomic reads from the Picea abies litter and soil to KEGG classes. The data represent means of six replicated sites per horizon and season. Differences among pairs of treatments were tested for statistical significance using Mann-Whitney U-test, differences at P < 0.05 are indicated in bold script. Table S6. KEGGs all samples: Assignment of identified metatranscriptomic reads from the Picea abies litter and soil to KEGG classes for all samples. Abbreviations: LS - litter summer, LW - litter winter, SS - soil summer, SW - soil winter, numbers indicate sampling sites. istex:8E7B499D640F3C0199F8D3C32AF7A72EDEB5210C Institute of Microbiology of the ASCR - No. RVO61388971 ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 1462-2912 1462-2920 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/1462-2920.13026 |