Archaea in a warming climate become less diverse, more predictable


Date:
May 5, 2023
Source:
University of Oklahoma
Summary:
Using a long-term multifactor experimental field site researchers
showed that experimental warming of a tallgrass prairie ecosystem
significantly altered the community structure of soil archaea and
reduced their taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity.


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FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Led by Jizhong Zhou, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for
Environmental Genomics at the University of Oklahoma, an international
research team conducted a long term experiment that found that climate
warming reduced the diversity of and significantly altered the community structure of soil archaea.

Their findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

At the microbiological level, life can be described as belonging to
one of three kingdoms -- how species are described in relation to one
another. Eukarya contains complex organisms like animals and plants and microorganisms such as fungi. The other two categories, bacteria and
archaea, are comprised only of microorganisms. Archaea are prevalent in
a range of environments, from some of the most hostile like volcanoes
and permafrost. However, archaea are also common in the human microbiome
and as an important part of soil ecology.

"As temperature is a major driver of biological processes, climate
warming will impact various ecological communities," Zhou said. "Based
on long-term time- series data, our previous studies revealed that
experimental warming leads to the divergent succession of soil bacterial
and fungal communities, accelerates microbial temporal scaling, reduces
the biodiversity of soil bacteria, fungi and protists, but increases
bacterial network complexity and stability.

However, how climate warming affects the temporal succession of the
archaeal community remains elusive. Archaea are ubiquitously present
in soil and are vital to soil functions, e.g., nitrification and methanogenesis." Using a long-term multifactor experimental field
site at OU's Kessler Atmospheric and Ecological Field Station, the
researchers showed that experimental warming of a tallgrass prairie
ecosystem significantly altered the community structure of soil archaea
and reduced their taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity. In contrast
to the researchers' previous observations in bacteria and fungi, their
finds show that climate warming leads to convergent succession of the
soil archaeal community, suggesting archaeal community structures would
become more predictable in a warmer world.

* RELATED_TOPICS
o Plants_&_Animals
# Soil_Types # Organic # Fungus # Nature
o Earth_&_Climate
# Environmental_Issues # Global_Warming # Climate #
Environmental_Awareness
* RELATED_TERMS
o Biodiversity o Prairie_Restoration o Soil_science o
Hydroponics o Climate_change_mitigation o Organic_farming o
Soil_life o Ecosystem

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Oklahoma. Original
written by Chelsea Julian. Note: Content may be edited for style and
length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Ya Zhang, Daliang Ning, Linwei Wu, Mengting Maggie Yuan, Xishu
Zhou, Xue
Guo, Yuanliang Hu, Siyang Jian, Zhifeng Yang, Shun Han, Jiajie
Feng, Jialiang Kuang, Carolyn R. Cornell, Colin T. Bates, Yupeng
Fan, Jonathan P. Michael, Yang Ouyang, Jiajing Guo, Zhipeng Gao,
Zheng Shi, Naijia Xiao, Ying Fu, Aifen Zhou, Liyou Wu, Xueduan Liu,
Yunfeng Yang, James M.

Tiedje, Jizhong Zhou. Experimental warming leads to convergent
succession of grassland archaeal community. Nature Climate Change,
2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01664-x ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230505141613.htm

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