Dimensions: Collaborative Research: The taxonomic, genomic, and functional diversity of soil carbon dynamics

微生物的多样性是巨大的，最近的发现表明土壤是地球上最多样化的微生物群落的家园。目前的项目将探索微生物对土壤碳有效性变化的惊人反应：当新的碳进入土壤时，特别是容易被土壤微生物吸收和分解的碳，会发生连锁反应，导致旧的土壤碳分解，否则这些碳会保持稳定。目前的理论并不能解释这种连锁反应。这个项目将测试分类生物多样性和它所支持的遗传生物多样性——换句话说，谁在那里，他们在做什么——是否可以解释这种不寻常的碳循环现象。研究人员将在亚利桑那州跨越气候梯度的土壤中进行长期研究，并使用各种分子、基因组、化学和分析方法。这项工作将检验这样一种观点，即碳循环的部分是生物之间相互作用的结果，生物多样性是一个基本的驱动因素，从而将基因、群落和生态系统联系起来。这项提议的工作解决了生物多样性科学和全球碳循环中的重要问题，而且很重要，因为土壤碳是一个主要的储存库，它储存的碳大约是大气中二氧化碳含量的三倍。微生物多样性是大部分碳循环展开的生物模板，但多样性如何改变土壤碳循环的证据仍然难以捉摸。该项目将解决这一基本知识差距，产生适用于碳管理的信息，培养本科、研究生和博士后水平的新科学家，并通过外展活动吸引公众。

Microbial diversity is vast, and recent discoveries place soils as home to the most diverse of the Earth's microbial communities. The current project will probe a surprising response of microorganisms to changes in soil carbon availability: when new carbon enters soil, especially carbon that is easily assimilated and decomposed by soil microorganisms, a chain reaction occurs leading to the breakdown of older soil carbon, carbon that would otherwise have remained stable. Current theory does not explain this chain reaction. This project will test whether taxonomic biodiversity and the genetic biodiversity it supports - in other words, who is there and what are they doing - can explain this unusual carbon cycling phenomenon. Researchers will use long-term study sites in soils spanning a climatic gradient in Arizona and a variety of molecular, genomic, chemical and analytical approaches. The work will test the idea that parts of the carbon cycle are emergent consequences of interactions among organisms, with biodiversity as a fundamental driver, thereby connecting genes to communities to ecosystems. The proposed work addresses important questions both in biodiversity science and the global carbon cycle, and is important because soil carbon is a major reservoir, storing about three times the amount of carbon contained in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Microbial biodiversity is the biological template upon which much of the carbon cycle unfolds, yet evidence of how diversity alters the soil carbon cycle remains elusive. This project will address this fundamental knowledge gap, generate information applicable to carbon management, train new scientists at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral levels, and engage the public through outreach activities.