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Soil disturbance affects plant growth via soil microbial community shifts

View ORCID ProfileTaylor J. Seitz, Ursel M. E. Schütte, View ORCID ProfileDevin M. Drown
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.16.343053
Taylor J. Seitz
1Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA
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Ursel M. E. Schütte
2Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA
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Devin M. Drown
1Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA
2Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA
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  • For correspondence: dmdrown@alaska.edu
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Abstract

Recent advances in climate research have discovered that permafrost is particularly vulnerable to the changes occurring in the atmosphere and climate, especially in Alaska where 85% of the land is underlain by mostly discontinuous permafrost. As permafrost thaws, research has shown that natural and anthropogenic soil disturbance causes microbial communities to undergo shifts in membership composition and biomass, as well as in functional diversity. Boreal forests are home to many plants that are integral to the subsistence diets of many Alaska Native communities. Yet, it is unclear how the observed shifts in soil microbes can affect above ground plant communities that are relied on as a major source of food. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that microbial communities associated with permafrost thaw affect plant growth by growing five plant species found in Boreal forests and Tundra ecosystems, including low-bush cranberry and bog blueberry, with microbial communities from the active layer soils of a permafrost thaw gradient. We found that plant growth was significantly affected by the microbial soil inoculants. Plants inoculated with communities from above thawing permafrost showed decreased growth compared to plants inoculated with microbes from undisturbed soils. We used metagenomic sequencing to determine that microbial communities from disturbed soils above thawing permafrost have differences in taxonomy from microbial communities in undisturbed soils above intact permafrost. The combination of these results indicates that a decrease in plant growth can be linked to soil disturbance driven changes in microbial community membership and abundance. These data contribute to an understanding of how microbial communities can be affected by soil disturbance and climate change, and how those community shifts can further influence plant growth in Boreal forests and more broadly, ecosystem health.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 16, 2020.
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Soil disturbance affects plant growth via soil microbial community shifts
Taylor J. Seitz, Ursel M. E. Schütte, Devin M. Drown
bioRxiv 2020.10.16.343053; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.16.343053
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Soil disturbance affects plant growth via soil microbial community shifts
Taylor J. Seitz, Ursel M. E. Schütte, Devin M. Drown
bioRxiv 2020.10.16.343053; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.16.343053

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