TY - JOUR
T1 - What Could Explain δ13C Signatures in Biocrust Cyanobacteria of Drylands?
AU - Stricker, Eva
AU - Crain, Grace
AU - Rudgers, Jenn
AU - Sinsabaugh, Robert
AU - Fernandes, Vanessa
AU - Nelson, Corey
AU - Giraldo-Silva, Ana
AU - Garcia-Pichel, Ferran
AU - Belnap, Jayne
AU - Darrouzet-Nardi, Anthony
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Jarek Kwiecinski, Noelle Martinez, Laura Green, Charlie Mettler, Vishwa Patel, Maria Isabel Siles Asaff, for lab and field work assistance. We thank Dr. Benjamin Brunner at UTEP and Laura Burkemper, Seth Newsome, and Viorel Atudorei for stable isotope analysis assistance. Data is available from EDI (https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/b59b733653671fc1a28f12a865e121bc) and sequences are available at NCBI (SRA number SUB5948515).
Funding Information:
Funding was provided by NSF nos. 1557135, 1557162, and Jornada LTER grant nos. 1832194. This research was partially supported by grants from the National Science Foundation to the University of New Mexico for Long-term Ecological Research (SEV-LTER). Acknowledgments Availability of Data and Material
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Dryland ecosystems are increasing in geographic extent and contribute greatly to interannual variability in global carbon dynamics. Disentangling interactions among dominant primary producers, including plants and autotrophic microbes, can help partition their contributions to dryland C dynamics. We measured the δ13C signatures of biological soil crust cyanobacteria and dominant plant species (C3 and C4) across a regional scale in the southwestern USA to determine if biocrust cyanobacteria were coupled to plant productivity (using plant-derived C mixotrophically), or independent of plant activity (and therefore purely autotrophic). Cyanobacterial assemblages located next to all C3 plants and one C4 species had consistently more negative δ13C (by 2‰) than the cyanobacteria collected from plant interspaces or adjacent to two C4Bouteloua grass species. The differences among cyanobacterial assemblages in δ13C could not be explained by cyanobacterial community composition, photosynthetic capacity, or any measured leaf or root characteristics (all slopes not different from zero). Thus, microsite differences in abiotic conditions near plants, rather than biotic interactions, remain a likely mechanism underlying the observed δ13C patterns to be tested experimentally.
AB - Dryland ecosystems are increasing in geographic extent and contribute greatly to interannual variability in global carbon dynamics. Disentangling interactions among dominant primary producers, including plants and autotrophic microbes, can help partition their contributions to dryland C dynamics. We measured the δ13C signatures of biological soil crust cyanobacteria and dominant plant species (C3 and C4) across a regional scale in the southwestern USA to determine if biocrust cyanobacteria were coupled to plant productivity (using plant-derived C mixotrophically), or independent of plant activity (and therefore purely autotrophic). Cyanobacterial assemblages located next to all C3 plants and one C4 species had consistently more negative δ13C (by 2‰) than the cyanobacteria collected from plant interspaces or adjacent to two C4Bouteloua grass species. The differences among cyanobacterial assemblages in δ13C could not be explained by cyanobacterial community composition, photosynthetic capacity, or any measured leaf or root characteristics (all slopes not different from zero). Thus, microsite differences in abiotic conditions near plants, rather than biotic interactions, remain a likely mechanism underlying the observed δ13C patterns to be tested experimentally.
KW - Biological soil crusts
KW - Carbon cycle
KW - Carbon stable isotopes
KW - Chlorophyll
KW - Cyanobacteria
KW - qPCR
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U2 - 10.1007/s00248-020-01536-3
DO - 10.1007/s00248-020-01536-3
M3 - Article
C2 - 32621211
AN - SCOPUS:85087510407
SN - 0095-3628
VL - 81
SP - 134
EP - 145
JO - Microbial Ecology
JF - Microbial Ecology
IS - 1
ER -