Drought decreases incorporation of recent plant photosynthate into soil food webs regardless of their trophic complexity

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dc.contributor.authorChomel, Mathilde
dc.contributor.authorLavallee, Jocelyn M.
dc.contributor.authorAlvarez‐Segura, Nil
dc.contributor.authorDe Castro, Francisco
dc.contributor.authorRhymes, Jennifer M.
dc.contributor.authorCaruso, Tancredi
dc.contributor.authorVries, Franciska T. de
dc.contributor.authorBaggs, Elizabeth M.
dc.contributor.authorEmmerson, Mark C.
dc.contributor.authorBardgett, Richard D.
dc.contributor.authorJohnson, David
dc.date.accessioned2020-06-01T15:08:20Z
dc.date.available2020-06-01T15:08:20Z
dc.date.issued2019-07-13
dc.descriptionPublication history: Accepted - 18 June 2019, Published - 13 July 2019.en_US
dc.description.abstractTheory suggests that more complex food webs promote stability and can buffer the effects of perturbations, such as drought, on soil organisms and ecosystem functions. Here, we tested experimentally how soil food web trophic complexity modulates the response to drought of soil functions related to carbon cycling and the capture and transfer below‐ground of recent photosynthate by plants. We constructed experimental systems comprising soil communities with one, two or three trophic levels (microorganisms, detritivores and predators) and subjected them to drought. We investigated how food web trophic complexity in interaction with drought influenced litter decomposition, soil CO2 efflux, mycorrhizal colonization, fungal production, microbial communities and soil fauna biomass. Plants were pulse‐labelled after the drought with 13C‐CO2 to quantify the capture of recent photosynthate and its transfer below‐ground. Overall, our results show that drought and soil food web trophic complexity do not interact to affect soil functions and microbial community composition, but act independently, with an overall stronger effect of drought. After drought, the net uptake of 13C by plants was reduced and its retention in plant biomass was greater, leading to a strong decrease in carbon transfer below‐ground. Although food web trophic complexity influenced the biomass of Collembola and fungal hyphal length, 13C enrichment and the net transfer of carbon from plant shoots to microbes and soil CO2 efflux were not affected significantly by varying the number of trophic groups. Our results indicate that drought has a strong effect on above‐ground–below‐ground linkages by reducing the flow of recent photosynthate. Our results emphasize the sensitivity of the critical pathway of recent photosynthate transfer from plants to soil organisms to a drought perturbation, and show that these effects may not be mitigated by the trophic complexity of soil communities, at least at the level manipulated in this experiment.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipNatural Environment Research Council. Grant Number: NE/M017028/1en_US
dc.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12518/141
dc.identifier.citationChomel, M., Lavallee, J. M., Alvarez‐Segura, N., Castro, F., Rhymes, J. M., Caruso, T., Vries, F. T., Baggs, E. M., Emmerson, M. C., Bardgett, R. D. and Johnson, D. (2019) ‘Drought decreases incorporation of recent plant photosynthate into soil food webs regardless of their trophic complexity’, Global Change Biology. Wiley, 25(10), pp. 3549–3561. doi: 10.1111/gcb.14754.en_US
dc.identifier.issn1365-2486
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14754
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherWileyen_US
dc.rights© 2019 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.en_US
dc.subjectacari, collembola, microorganisms, plant-soil interaction, pulse-labelling, root-derived C, soil biodiversity, stable isotopeen_US
dc.titleDrought decreases incorporation of recent plant photosynthate into soil food webs regardless of their trophic complexityen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dcterms.dateAccepted2019-06-18
dcterms.dateSubmitted2019-04-12

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