Abstract
The high diversity of microbial communities hampers predictions about their responses to global change. Here we investigate the potential for using a phylogenetic, trait-based framework to capture the response of bacteria and fungi to global change manipulations. Replicated grassland plots were subjected to 3+ years of drought and nitrogen fertilization. The responses of leaf litter bacteria and fungi to these simulated changes were significantly phylogenetically conserved. Proportional changes in abundance were highly correlated among related organisms, such that relatives with approximately 5% ribosomal DNA genetic distance showed similar responses to the treatments. A microbe’s change in relative abundance was significantly correlated between the treatments, suggesting a compromise between numerical abundance in undisturbed environments and resistance to change in general, independent of disturbance type. Lineages in which at least 90% of the microbes shared the same response were circumscribed at a modest phylogenetic depth (τD 0.014–0.021), but significantly larger than randomized simulations predict. In several clades, phylogenetic depth of trait consensus was higher. Fungal response to drought was more conserved than was response to nitrogen fertilization, whereas bacteria responded equally to both treatments. Finally, we show that a bacterium’s response to the manipulations is correlated with its potential functional traits (measured here as the number of glycoside hydrolase genes encoding the capacity to degrade different types of carbohydrates). Together, these results suggest that a phylogenetic, trait-based framework may be useful for predicting shifts in microbial composition and functioning in the face of global change.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Kristin Matulich for technical and statistical assistance, the Orange County Parks and the Irvine Ranch Conservancy for site access, and Eoin Brodie and several anonymous reviewers for critical feedback. This study was support by a NOAA VSP climate change fellowship (ASA) and by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), under Award Number DE-PS02-09ER09-25 (ACM, SDA, MLG, KKT and JBHM).
Author Contributions
ASA, JBHM and ACM designed research; ASA, YL and CW performed research; ASA, RB and ACM analyzed data; and ASA, ACM, SDA, MLG, KKT and JBHM wrote the paper.
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Amend, A., Martiny, A., Allison, S. et al. Microbial response to simulated global change is phylogenetically conserved and linked with functional potential. ISME J 10, 109–118 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2015.96
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2015.96
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