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Responses to increases in temperature of heterotrophic micro-organisms in soils from the maritime Antarctic

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Abstract

Understanding relationships between environmental changes and soil microbial respiration is critical for predicting changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) fluxes and content. The maritime Antarctic is experiencing one of the fastest rates of warming in the world and is therefore a key location to examine the effect of temperature on SOC mineralization by the respiration of soil micro-organisms. However, depletion of the labile substrates at higher temperatures relative to the total SOC and greater temperature sensitivity of recalcitrant components of the SOC confound simple interpretations of the effects of warming. We have addressed these issues by testing the hypothesis that respiration by heterotrophic soil micro-organisms is not down-regulated with increasing temperature by comparing the increase in biomass-specific respiration rate with temperature to the increase in respiration rate per unit SOC. We used five soils from the maritime Antarctic ranging in latitude and SOC content and measured the soil respiratory responses to temperatures ranging from 2 to 50 °C in laboratory incubations lasting up to 31 days. In all cases, soil respiration increased with temperature up to 50 °C, even though this exceeds the temperatures normally be experienced, indicating that the community contained sufficient physiological diversity to be able to respire over large temperature ranges. Both the biomass-specific respiration rate and the overall rate of SOC mineralization increased with temperature, which we interpret as respiration by soil micro-organisms not down-regulating relative to temperature.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was supplied by the UK Natural Environment Research Council through the Antarctic Funding Initiative (AFI 7/05; NE/D00893X/1). Logistical support was provided by the British Antarctic Survey and the Royal Navy. Sun Benhua was supported by the Chinese 111 Project (No. B12007) and V A Laudicina in part by the OECD; both these sources are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento Scienze Agrarie e Forestali, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Ed. 4, 90128, Palermo, Italy

    Vito Armando Laudicina & Luigi Badalucco

  2. College of Natural Resources and Environment, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, 712100, Shaanxi Province, People’s Republic of China

    Sun Benhua

  3. School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Paul G. Dennis

  4. School of Biology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK

    Steven P. Rushton

  5. British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, UK

    Kevin K. Newsham

  6. Faculty of Science, The University of Western Australia, Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia

    Anthony G. O’Donnell

  7. College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4RJ, UK

    Iain P. Hartley

  8. The Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, GL7 6JS, UK

    David W. Hopkins

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  1. Vito Armando Laudicina
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Correspondence to David W. Hopkins.

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Laudicina, V.A., Benhua, S., Dennis, P.G. et al. Responses to increases in temperature of heterotrophic micro-organisms in soils from the maritime Antarctic. Polar Biol 38, 1153–1160 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-015-1673-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-015-1673-4

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