EGU2020-10838
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-10838
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Contrasting responses of soil fungal communities and soil respiration to the above‐ and below‐ground plant C inputs in a subtropical forest

Lingling Shi1,2, Wenting Feng3, Xin Jing4,5, Huadong Zang1, Peter Edward Mortimer2, and Xiaoming Zhou5
Lingling Shi et al.
  • 1Georg-August University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany (slingli@gwdg.de)
  • 2Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany
  • 3National Engineering Laboratory for Improving Quality of Arable Land, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, Chin (PDF) Contrasting responses of soil fungal communities and so
  • 4Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA
  • 5Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT05405, US

The roles of soil fungal diversity and community composition in regulating soil respiration when above‐ and below‐ground plant carbon (C) inputs are excluded remain unclear. In the present study, we aimed to examine: (i) how does the exclusion of above‐ and below‐ground plant C inputs affect soil respiration and soil fungi singly and in combination? and (ii) are changes in soil fungal diversity aligned with changes in soil respiration? A field experiment with manipulation of plant C inputs was established in a subtropical forest in southwest China in 2004 with litter removal and tree stem‐girdling to exclude inputs of the above‐ and below‐ground plant C, respectively. In 2009, we measured the rates of soil respiration with an infrared gas analyser and soil fungal community structure using Illumina sequencing. We found that the rates of soil respiration were reduced significantly by litter removal and girdling, by similar magnitudes. However, they were not decreased further by the combination of these two treatments compared to either treatment alone. In contrast, litter removal increased the diversity of soil fungal communities, whereas girdling decreased the abundance of symbiotrophic fungi but increased the abundance of saptrotrophic and pathotrophic fungi. These changes in soil fungal community might initiate CO2 emission from soil C decomposition, offsetting further decline in soil respiration when plant C inputs are excluded. These results revealed that the exclusion of the above‐ and below‐ground plant C inputs led to contrasting soil fungal communities but similar soil function. Our findings suggest that both above‐ and below‐ground plant C are important in regulating soil respiration in subtropical forests, by limiting substrates for soil fungal growth and altering the diversity and composition of soil fungal community.

How to cite: Shi, L., Feng, W., Jing, X., Zang, H., Mortimer, P. E., and Zhou, X.: Contrasting responses of soil fungal communities and soil respiration to the above‐ and below‐ground plant C inputs in a subtropical forest, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-10838, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-10838, 2020

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