How do plant and soil microbial diversity respond differently to climate change?

Diverse plants live in association with an immense diversity of soil microorganisms (e.g., bacteria, fungi) that sustain the functioning and health of natural ecosystems. These biodiversity components are threatened by anthropogenic climate change. Plants and soil microorganisms differ fundamentally in life form and in how they perceive environmental change, making uniform diversity responses to climate change unlikely. However, disciplinary isolation has limited direct comparisons of their responses, and most climate-change experiments focus on either plants or soil microorganisms alone, or rely on short-term or snapshot observations. This makes it impossible to determine trends in their collective responses over the longer term, which hampers our understanding of the dynamics of plant–soil systems under climate change. Here, we report results from a long-term (2011–present) experiment conducted in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau. The experiment employs a full-factorial manipulation of warming (+2 °C) and precipitation (−50% and +50%). Using a species gain–loss perspective, we reveal how coexisting plants and soil microorganisms unfold divergent diversity trajectories through distinct species turnover in response to simultaneous climate-change variables. These findings contribute to a general understanding of biodiversity responses to climate change across ecosystems and biological groups. We further discuss the broader implications of these divergent responses for ecosystem functioning and stability under ongoing global change.