Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Publications
Campus Units
Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Submitted Manuscript
Publication Date
1-2016
Journal or Book Title
Environmental Microbiology
Volume
18
Issue
1
First Page
288
Last Page
301
DOI
10.1111/1462-2920.13026
Abstract
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.
Access
Open
Copyright Owner
Society for Applied Microbiology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Copyright Date
2015
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Žifčáková, Lucia; Větrovský, Tomáš; Howe, Adina; and Baldrian, Petr, "Microbial activity in forest soil reflects the changes in ecosystem properties between summer and winter" (2016). Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Publications. 737.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/abe_eng_pubs/737
Included in
Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Commons, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Commons
Comments
This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Zifacakova, L., Vetrovsky, T., Howe, A., Baldrian, P. 2016. Microbial activity in forest soil reflects the changes in ecosystem properties between summer and winter. Environmental Microbiology, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.13026. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.