Mimicking climate warming effects on Alaskan soil microbial communities via gradual temperature increase

Climate change can trigger shifts in community structure and may therefore pose a severe threat to soil microbial communities, especially in high northern latitudes such as the Arctic. Arctic soils are covered by snow and ice throughout most of the year. This insulation shields them from high temperature variability and low surface temperatures. If this protective layer thaws, these soils are predicted to warm up at 1.5x to 4x the rate of other terrestrial biomes. In this study, we sampled arctic soils from sites with different elevations in Alaska, incubated them for 5 months with a simulated, gradual or abrupt temperature increase of +5 °C, and compared bacterial and fungal community compositions after the incubation. We hypothesized that the microbial communities would not significantly change with a gradual temperature treatment, whereas an abrupt temperature increase would decrease microbial diversity and shift community composition. The only differences in community composition that we observed were, however, related to the two elevations. The abrupt and gradual temperature increase treatments did not change the microbial community composition as compared to the control indicating resistance of the microbial community to changes in temperature. This points to the potential importance of microbial dormancy and resting stages in the formation of a “buffer” against elevated temperatures. Microbial resting stages might heavily contribute to microbial biomass and thus drive the responsiveness of arctic ecosystems to climate change.