Microbial communities of boreal peatlands under climate change conditions: Does community structure indicate the dynamics of ecosystem function?. Climate change

Anthropogenic stressors such as climate change are reducing overall diversity of soil biota. Soil microbial communities are involved in the provision of a wide range of ecosystem processes. But little is known about the impacts of reduced diversity of microbial communities on the maintenance of their functional characteristics, and stability of ecosystem services. Using a full factorial design of increased temperature, elevated atmospheric CO2 and water table drawdown, we simulated Canada’s future climate, and monitored changes in microbial communities, and their functional characteristics in 84 intact peatland mesocosms through Illumina MiSeq sequencing of 16S rDNA over 18 months. We found that prokaryotic communities are highly susceptible to hydrology dynamics, but also functionally highly redundant that may help them to maintain their functional characteristics even following hydrological-induced changes in the structure of their community. The warming-induced changes in richness, and the structure of microbial communities did not show a strong corresponding pattern to average release of dissolved organic carbon to the peat matrix observed under the same experimental conditions. These results might suggest that since microbial communities are not the only essential performers of ecosystem services, they cannot independently be an appropriate indicator of changes in the measure of ecosystem functioning.