Phylogenetic conservation of substrate use specialization in leaf litter bacteria

Environmental change will influence the ecosystem processes regulated by microbial communities, including leaf litter decomposition. To assess how microbial communities and their functioning might respond to increases in temperature, we quantified the distribution of traits related to carbon substrate utilization and temperature sensitivity in leaf litter bacteria isolated from a natural grassland ecosystem in Southern California. The isolates varied substantially in their carbon substrate use, as well as their response to temperature change. To better predict the functioning and responses in natural communities, we also examined if the functional and response traits were phylogenetically patterned or correlated with one another. We found that the distribution of functional traits displayed a phylogenetic pattern, but the sensitivity of the traits to changes in temperature did not. We also did not detect any correlations between carbon substrate use and sensitivity to changes in temperature. Together, these results suggest that information about microbial composition may provide insights to predicting ecosystem function under one temperature, but that these relationships may not hold under new temperature conditions.