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Microbial Communities in Nature and Laboratory - Interview
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Evolutionary history constrains microbial traits across environmental variation.

Ember M Morrissey1, Rebecca L Mau2,3, Michaela Hayer2

  • 1Division of Plant and Soil Sciences, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA. ember.morrissey@mail.wvu.edu.

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|June 19, 2019
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Summary

Soil microbial traits like growth and carbon assimilation are primarily shaped by evolutionary history, not climate. Taxonomic groups, reflecting evolutionary history, better predict microbial responses to resources than environmental conditions.

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Microbial Ecology
  • Evolutionary Biology

Background:

  • Organisms, including microorganisms, significantly impact ecosystem functions.
  • Understanding microbial ecology in natural habitats requires quantitative trait analysis.
  • New approaches now enable quantitative study of microbial traits in situ.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the influence of evolutionary history versus climate on soil microbial growth and carbon assimilation rates.
  • To determine the relative importance of taxonomic groups and ecosystem type in explaining microbial trait variation.
  • To assess the plasticity of microbial traits across diverse environmental conditions.

Main Methods:

  • Quantitative trait measurements of soil microorganisms across a broad climatic gradient.
  • Analysis of growth rate and carbon assimilation rate variation.
  • Comparison of variance explained by taxonomic groups versus ecosystem type, especially with resource addition.

Main Results:

  • Evolutionary history, indicated by taxonomic groups, had a stronger influence on microbial growth and carbon assimilation than climate.
  • Taxonomic differences explained ~50% to ~90% of the variation in these traits.
  • Taxonomic groupings were more predictive of responses to added carbon and nitrogen substrates, explaining eightfold more variance than ecosystem type.

Conclusions:

  • Microbial traits in natural habitats are largely constrained by evolutionary history, similar to multicellular organisms.
  • Environmental variation across temperature, precipitation, and vegetation gradients showed limited plasticity in taxon-specific rates.
  • Evolutionary history plays a more dominant role than environmental variation in shaping soil prokaryote traits.