TY - JOUR
T1 - Winter warming rapidly increases carbon degradation capacities of fungal communities in tundra soil
T2 - Potential consequences on carbon stability
AU - Cheng, Jingmin
AU - Yang, Yunfeng
AU - Yuan, Mengting M.
AU - Gao, Qun
AU - Wu, Liyou
AU - Qin, Ziyan
AU - Shi, Zhou J.
AU - Schuur, Edward A.G.
AU - Cole, James R.
AU - Tiedje, James M.
AU - Zhou, Jizhong
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor for constructive comments and suggestions to make this paper greatly improved. The data analysis by Jingmin Cheng is supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) programme (2019QZKK0503), and the National Science Foundation of China (41877048 and 41825016). The study site maintenance, sampling and experiments are supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Genomic Science Program under Award Numbers DE‐SC0004601 and DE‐SC0010715, the NSF LTER programme, and the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma.
Funding Information:
We thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor for constructive comments and suggestions to make this paper greatly improved. The data analysis by Jingmin Cheng is supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) programme (2019QZKK0503), and the National Science Foundation of China (41877048 and 41825016). The study site maintenance, sampling and experiments are supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Genomic Science Program under Award Numbers DE-SC0004601 and DE-SC0010715, the NSF LTER programme, and the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
PY - 2021/2
Y1 - 2021/2
N2 - High-latitude tundra ecosystems are increasingly affected by climate warming. As an important fraction of soil microorganisms, fungi play essential roles in carbon degradation, especially the old, chemically recalcitrant carbon. However, it remains obscure how fungi respond to climate warming and whether fungi, in turn, affect carbon stability of tundra. In a 2-year winter soil warming experiment of 2°C by snow fences, we investigated responses of fungal communities to warming in the active layer of an Alaskan tundra. Although fungal community composition, revealed by the 28S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, remained unchanged (p >.05), fungal functional gene composition, revealed by a microarray named GeoChip, was altered (p <.05). Changes in functional gene composition were linked to winter soil temperature, thaw depth, soil moisture, and gross primary productivity (canonical correlation analysis, p <.05). Specifically, relative abundances of fungal genes encoding invertase, xylose reductase and vanillin dehydrogenase significantly increased (p <.05), indicating higher carbon degradation capacities of fungal communities under warming. Accordingly, we detected changes in fungal gene networks under warming, including higher average path distance, lower average clustering coefficient and lower percentage of negative links, indicating that warming potentially changed fungal interactions. Together, our study reveals higher carbon degradation capacities of fungal communities under short-term warming and highlights the potential impacts of fungal communities on tundra ecosystem respiration, and consequently future carbon stability of high-latitude tundra.
AB - High-latitude tundra ecosystems are increasingly affected by climate warming. As an important fraction of soil microorganisms, fungi play essential roles in carbon degradation, especially the old, chemically recalcitrant carbon. However, it remains obscure how fungi respond to climate warming and whether fungi, in turn, affect carbon stability of tundra. In a 2-year winter soil warming experiment of 2°C by snow fences, we investigated responses of fungal communities to warming in the active layer of an Alaskan tundra. Although fungal community composition, revealed by the 28S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, remained unchanged (p >.05), fungal functional gene composition, revealed by a microarray named GeoChip, was altered (p <.05). Changes in functional gene composition were linked to winter soil temperature, thaw depth, soil moisture, and gross primary productivity (canonical correlation analysis, p <.05). Specifically, relative abundances of fungal genes encoding invertase, xylose reductase and vanillin dehydrogenase significantly increased (p <.05), indicating higher carbon degradation capacities of fungal communities under warming. Accordingly, we detected changes in fungal gene networks under warming, including higher average path distance, lower average clustering coefficient and lower percentage of negative links, indicating that warming potentially changed fungal interactions. Together, our study reveals higher carbon degradation capacities of fungal communities under short-term warming and highlights the potential impacts of fungal communities on tundra ecosystem respiration, and consequently future carbon stability of high-latitude tundra.
KW - Alaskan tundra
KW - carbon degradation
KW - functional gene
KW - network analysis
KW - soil fungal communities
KW - winter warming
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U2 - 10.1111/mec.15773
DO - 10.1111/mec.15773
M3 - Article
C2 - 33305411
AN - SCOPUS:85097923134
SN - 0962-1083
VL - 30
SP - 926
EP - 937
JO - Molecular ecology
JF - Molecular ecology
IS - 4
ER -