TY - JOUR

T1 - Divergent national-scale trends of microbial and animal biodiversity revealed across diverse temperate soil ecosystems

AU - George, Paul

AU - Lallias, Delphine

AU - Creer, Simon

AU - Seaton, Fiona

AU - Kenny, John G.

AU - Eccles, Richard M.

AU - Griffiths, Robert

AU - Lebron, I.

AU - Emmett, Bridget

AU - Robinson, David

AU - Jones, Davey L.

PY - 2019/3/7

Y1 - 2019/3/7

N2 - Soil biota accounts for ~25% of global biodiversity and is vital to nutrient cycling and primary production. There is growing momentum to study total belowground biodiversity across large ecological scales to understand how habitat and soil properties shape belowground communities. Microbial and animal components of belowground communities follow divergent responses to soil properties and land use intensification; however, it is unclear whether this extends across heterogeneous ecosystems. Here, a national-scale metabarcoding analysis of 436 locations across 7 different temperate ecosystems shows that belowground animal and microbial (bacteria, archaea, fungi, and protists) richness follow divergent trends, whereas β-diversity does not. Animal richness is governed by intensive land use and unaffected by soil properties, while microbial richness was driven by environmental properties across land uses. Our findings demonstrate that established divergent patterns of belowground microbial and animal diversity are consistent across heterogeneous land uses and are detectable using a standardised metabarcoding approach

AB - Soil biota accounts for ~25% of global biodiversity and is vital to nutrient cycling and primary production. There is growing momentum to study total belowground biodiversity across large ecological scales to understand how habitat and soil properties shape belowground communities. Microbial and animal components of belowground communities follow divergent responses to soil properties and land use intensification; however, it is unclear whether this extends across heterogeneous ecosystems. Here, a national-scale metabarcoding analysis of 436 locations across 7 different temperate ecosystems shows that belowground animal and microbial (bacteria, archaea, fungi, and protists) richness follow divergent trends, whereas β-diversity does not. Animal richness is governed by intensive land use and unaffected by soil properties, while microbial richness was driven by environmental properties across land uses. Our findings demonstrate that established divergent patterns of belowground microbial and animal diversity are consistent across heterogeneous land uses and are detectable using a standardised metabarcoding approach

KW - Animals

KW - Biodiversity

KW - Computational Biology

KW - DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic

KW - Ecosystem

KW - Microbiota/genetics

KW - Soil

KW - Soil Microbiology

KW - Wales

UR - https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-019-09031-1/MediaObjects/41467_2019_9031_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

U2 - 10.1038/s41467-019-09031-1

DO - 10.1038/s41467-019-09031-1

M3 - Article

C2 - 30846683

VL - 10

SP - 1107

JO - Nature Communications

JF - Nature Communications

SN - 2041-1723

IS - 1

M1 - 1107

ER -