Active and total rhizosphere microbiome of Trifolium pratense Raw sequence reads

Relationship between biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) in soil is the central issue in general and microbial ecology. To date, most of the soil BEF studies focus on diversity of microbes at the total DNA level that include active and inactive (dead or dormant microbes). However, dead or dormant microbes may not play immediate roles in soil ecosystem functions and may only stay as back up. Theses inactive microbes may hidden the information on whom doing the functions or processes in particular ecosystem. Here we show that the richness of overall and specific functional groups of metabolically active microbes in rhizosphere soil significantly (P < 0.05) link with the soil ecosystem functions in grassland ecosystem while total microbial richness dis not. Metabolically active microbes are taxonomically and functionally diverse in soil. We estimated that 42.8 % of bacteria and 32.1 % of fungi in soil are metabolically active. We found that total and metabolically active microbes are adapted to the manipulated future climate change. Overall, our findings provide critical insights into the role of active microbes in defining soil ecosystem functions in grassland ecosystem.