Un-stable microbiomes - Stability to drought of soil microbiomes shaped by land use and plant species

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Soils are inhabited by a myriad of different microorganisms, including fungi and bacteria. These complex microbial communities are responsible for many ecosystem services such as organic matter decomposition, nutrient cycling, and carbon and nutrient storage. But these services are threatened by climate change. Current climate projections predict an increasing frequency of severe droughts, which are known to strongly affect soil microbial communities and their function. Additionally, there is a second factor that threatens these communities: land use intensification. Soil microbes populating grassland soils have suffered from increasingly intensive management over the last century. Due to the ever-increasing demand for food production, grasslands have been subjected to significant land use intensification through fertilisation, at the expense of biodiversity (both of plants and soil microbes) and the ecosystem services it supports. How these two major threats will interact with one another to impact upon our future lives is still poorly understood.In this project, I will answer the question of how extreme and frequent drought affects the soil microbial communities, and how that is influenced by different plant species and land management. I will focus on the microbial community stability, in other words, the capacity of soil microbes to resist drought without changing or their capacity to recover after drought to the original state. To do that, I will carry out a series of controlled environment and lab experiments. I will collect soils from paired grasslands that have been subjected to different long-term land use intensity (extensive traditional management and intensive management) and I will grow on them two widespread grass species, which are typically abundant in intensively and extensively managed grasslands, and have markedly contrasting growth strategies (fast-growing vs slow-growing). The effects of drought, land use and plant species on soil microbial structure and function will be evaluated using state-of-the-art techniques. The results of this project will not only produce new insights into the mechanisms by which the soil microbial communities answer to climate extremes, which represents an important research challenge, but also it will generate new knowledge that is of relevance to BBSRC's strategic research priority of "food security and sustainable management".