How Do Microbial Communities Adapt to Soil Acidification?----Chinese Academy of Sciences

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How Do Microbial Communities Adapt to Soil Acidification?

Aug 20, 2021

Temperate grasslands in northern China have experienced soil acidification in the last 30 years due to increasing acid deposition and unsustainable management. Long-term soil acidification may lead to leaching of base cations, nutrient imbalances and metal stress for soil biomes.

Recently, a research team from the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) revealed how microbial communities adapt to the threats of soil acidification by experimentally adding elemental sulphur (S) to simulate soil acidification in a meadow steppe of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.

The study was published in Ecological Processes.

The researchers found that soil acidification increased relative abundance of fungi community and subsequently led to a conversion from microbial nitrogen (N) limitation to carbon (C) limitation with decreasing soil pH.

To cope with this situation, soil microbial communities regulated the relative production of enzymes by increasing the ratio of β-glucosidase (BG, C-acquiring enzyme) to leucine aminopeptidase (LAP, N-acquiring enzyme), even though both enzymatic activities decreased with S addition.

Results of structural equation modeling (SEM) suggested that the increased microbial carbon-use efficiency (CUE) counteracted the negative effect of metal stress (i.e., aluminum and manganese) under soil acidification.

The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program of CAS, and the Key State Research & Development Program of China.