Microbial community composition drives extreme patterns of soil carbon flow

Microbial decomposition processes in soils generate a substantial proportion of the terrestrial CO2 flux to the atmosphere. If the magnitude of this flux depends in part on the composition of soil microbial communities, managing soil microbes may allow manipulation of climate feedbacks in some ecosystems. In addition, a better understanding of the influence of microbial community composition over carbon fluxes would improve the representation of microbial processes in climate models. The goal of this study was to examine the impacts of community composition over carbon flow during decomposition, in isolation from abiotic factors and plant community physiology, which are also known to be influential. Using laboratory microcosms, we aimed to document the distribution of carbon outputs (dissolved organic carbon and carbon dioxide) from a collection of different microbial communities following the decomposition of pine litter. In addition, we aimed to discover explanatory traits shared by microbial communities exhibiting similar function.