Fig. 3: Changes in substrate quality and microbial functional gene abundances upon permafrost collapse and their relationships with the normalized Rs change.
From: Enhanced response of soil respiration to experimental warming upon thermokarst formation
a–i, Changes in O-alkyl C (a), alkyl C (b), alkyl/O-alkyl ratio (c) and the relative abundances of C degradation genes as transcripts per million reads mapped (TPM) upon thermokarst formation for cellulose (d), hemicellulose (e), chitin (f), pectin (g), aromatics (h) and lignin (i). The ends of the boxes represent the 25th and 75th percentiles, and the whiskers represent the 10th and 90th quartiles. The white dot in each box represents the average (n = 30). j, Standardized regression coefficient of the relationships of normalized Rs change with substrate quality and the abundances of microbial functional genes. The colour scale indicates the strength and sign of the correlations. Samples were collected from three thermo-erosion gullies at the Shaliuhe site in 2019. These comparisons were analysed based on linear mixed-effects models with one-sided F tests. ns, non-significant; *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001.
