We determined soil microbial community composition and function in a field experiment in which plant communities of increasing species richness were exposed to factorial elevated CO2 and nitrogen (N) deposition treatments. Because elevated CO2 and N deposition increased plant productivity to a greater extent in more diverse plant assemblages, it is plausible that heterotrophic microbial communities would experience greater substrate availability, potentially increasing microbial activity, and accelerating soil carbon (C) and N cycling. We, therefore, hypothesized that the response of microbial communities to elevated CO2 and N deposition is contingent on the species richness of plant communities. Microbial community composition was determined by phospholipid fatty acid analysis, and function was measured using the activity of key extracellular enzymes involved in litter decomposition. Higher plant species richness, as a main effect, fostered greater microbial biomass, cellulolytic and chitinolytic capacity, as well as the abundance of saprophytic and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Moreover, the effect of plant species richness on microbial communities was significantly modified by elevated CO2 and N deposition. For instance, microbial biomass and fungal abundance increased with greater species richness, but only under combinations of elevated CO2 and ambient N, or ambient CO2 and N deposition. Cellobiohydrolase activity increased with higher plant species richness, and this trend was amplified by elevated CO2. In most cases, the effect of plant species richness remained significant even after accounting for the influence of plant biomass. Taken together, our results demonstrate that plant species richness can directly regulate microbial activity and community composition, and that plant species richness is a significant determinant of microbial response to elevated CO2 and N deposition. The strong positive effect of plant species richness on cellulolytic capacity and microbial biomass indicate that the rates of soil C cycling may decline with decreasing plant species richness.
", "keywords": ["Extracellular Enzymes", "Complementary Resource Use", "Science", "Ecology and Evolutionary Biology", "Grassland Ecosystem", "Phospholipid Fatty Acid (PLFA)", "Global Change", "14. Life underwater", "complimentary resource use", "global change", "580", "2. Zero hunger", "Plant Diversity", "microbial biomass", "Geology and Earth Sciences", "grasslands", "Soil Fungi", "extracellular enzymes", "04 agricultural and veterinary sciences", "15. Life on land", "Microbial Biomass", "Soil C Cycling", "plant diversity", "13. Climate action", "0401 agriculture", " forestry", " and fisheries", "FACE (Free-air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment)"]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01313.x"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Global%20Change%20Biology", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01313.x", "name": "item", "description": "10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01313.x", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01313.x"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2007-01-19T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.1890/14-0088.1", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-07-26T16:19:47Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2014-07-18", "title": "Plant Diversity Effects On Soil Microbial Functions And Enzymes Are Stronger Than Warming In A Grassland Experiment", "description": "Anthropogenic changes in biodiversity and atmospheric temperature significantly influence ecosystem processes. However, little is known about potential interactive effects of plant diversity and warming on essential ecosystem properties, such as soil microbial functions and element cycling. We studied the effects of orthogonal manipulations of plant diversity (one, four, and 16 species) and warming (ambient, +1.5\uffc2\uffb0C, and +3\uffc2\uffb0C) on soil microbial biomass, respiration, growth after nutrient additions, and activities of extracellular enzymes in 2011 and 2012 in the BAC (biodiversity and climate) perennial grassland experiment site at Cedar Creek, Minnesota, USA. Focal enzymes are involved in essential biogeochemical processes of the carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles. Soil microbial biomass and some enzyme activities involved in the C and N cycle increased significantly with increasing plant diversity in both years. In addition, 16\uffe2\uff80\uff90species mixtures buffered warming induced reductions in topsoil water content. We found no interactive effects of plant diversity and warming on soil microbial biomass and growth rates. However, the activity of several enzymes (1,4\uffe2\uff80\uff90\uffce\uffb2\uffe2\uff80\uff90glucosidase, 1,4\uffe2\uff80\uff90\uffce\uffb2\uffe2\uff80\uff90N\uffe2\uff80\uff90acetylglucosaminidase, phosphatase, peroxidase) depended on interactions between plant diversity and warming with elevated activities of enzymes involved in the C, N, and P cycles at both high plant diversity and high warming levels. Increasing plant diversity consistently decreased microbial biomass\uffe2\uff80\uff90specific enzyme activities and altered soil microbial growth responses to nutrient additions, indicating that plant diversity changed nutrient limitations and/or microbial community composition. In contrast to our expectations, higher plant diversity only buffered temperature effects on soil water content, but not on microbial functions. Temperature effects on some soil enzymes were greatest at high plant diversity. In total, our results suggest that the fundamental temperature ranges of soil microbial communities may be sufficiently broad to buffer their functioning against changes in temperature and that plant diversity may be a dominant control of soil microbial processes in a changing world.
", "keywords": ["aboveground-belowground interactions", "Hot Temperature", "warming", "Climate Change", "biodiversity-ecosystem functioning", "global warming", "soil microbial ecology", "Soil", "XXXXXX - Unknown", "Biomass", "global change", "Soil Microbiology", "2. Zero hunger", "microbial biomass", "grasslands", "extracellular enzymes", "Biodiversity", "04 agricultural and veterinary sciences", "Plants", "15. Life on land", "plant diversity", "Enzymes", "grassland ecosystem", "13. 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The study was based on five experimental (pot) grassland systems with soil substrate, soil inocula, and plant communities representative of five European grasslands located in Belgium, Germany, Hungary (2), and Italy. Each grassland system contained four biodiversity levels (High, Mid, Low, and Min) obtained by selective filtering of field soil from the respective grasslands by size. For each grassland system and treatment, there were 10 replicates, resulting in 200 pots. The dataset contains information on plant biomass (total shoot, litter, grass, forb, root), plant diversity, soil total carbon (C) and nitrogen (N), dissolved organic C (DOC) and N (DON), microbial C and N, soil and microbial ammonium, microbial respiration, plant C and N, soil pH, and the relative abundance of bacterial parasites and pathogens, bacterial chemoheterotrophs, nitrifiers, ureolysers, N-fixers, plant pathogenic fungi, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.", "keywords": ["Ecosystem process", "Grassland ecosystem", "Soil biodiversity"], "contacts": [{"organization": "Radujkovi\u0107, Dajana", "roles": ["creator"]}]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16927117"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.5281/zenodo.16927117", "name": "item", "description": "10.5281/zenodo.16927117", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.5281/zenodo.16927117"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2025-08-21T00:00:00Z"}}], "links": [{"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "This document as GeoJSON", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=Grassland+Ecosystem&f=json", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"rel": "alternate", "type": "text/html", "title": "This document as HTML", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=Grassland+Ecosystem&f=html", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection URL", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"type": "application/geo+json", "rel": "first", "title": "items (first)", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=Grassland+Ecosystem&", "hreflang": "en-US"}, {"rel": "last", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "items (last)", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items?keywords=Grassland+Ecosystem&offset=5", "hreflang": "en-US"}], "numberMatched": 5, "numberReturned": 5, "distributedFeatures": [], "timeStamp": "2026-07-26T17:57:21.543741Z"}