Maize growth as a function of cover crop-mediated soil microbiome.

Soil microbes are critical drivers of maize growth and soil health by regulating soil fertility and suppressing diseases. Yet, the relative contribution to maize growth across diverse soil types, particularly following cover crop management, remains virtually unknown. Such knowledge is pivotal for soil ecological engineering, as microbiome management is emerging as a highly promising tool for more sustainable agriculture.

The blueberry phyllosphere microbiota: tissue-specific core communities and their stability across cultivars and years.

Blueberries are critical for food production due to their widespread consumption and nutritional value. Beyond agriculture, wild Vaccinium species play essential ecological roles, including supporting pollinators and enhancing soil health. This dual importance underscores their relevance to both food security and ecosystem sustainability.

Human land use promotes range expansion of soil protists from temperate to subtropical regions in China.

Land-use changes are reshaping the distribution of aboveground species worldwide. However, the impact of land-use changes on the distribution of soil organisms remains poorly understood. In particular, we lack a mechanistic understanding of the environmental factors reshaping the distribution of soil microbiota in response to global biological homogenization.

Vulnerability of soil food webs to chemical pollution and climate change.

Soil food webs are critical for maintaining ecosystem functions but are challenged by various stressors including climate change, habitat destruction and pollution. Although complex multitrophic networks can, in theory, buffer environmental stress, the effects of anthropogenic chemicals on soil food webs under climate change remain poorly understood. Here we propose that the effects of chemical pollution on soil communities have been largely underestimated, particularly for climate change-affected ecosystems.

Enhanced plant diversity reduces nitrous oxide emissions in forest soils worldwide.

Forests are recognized as the largest natural source of nitrous oxide (NO) emissions on land, with deforestation drastically reducing the cover and biodiversity of native forests worldwide. Yet, how losses in forest biodiversity affect soil NO fluxes remains poorly understood. Here, we combined a global tree diversity-forest soil NO data set, including 201 paired comparable observations from global forests, with a three-year field survey of flux data gathered from a long-term plant diversity field experiment.

Negative Impacts of Global Change Stressors Permeate Into Deep Soils.

Surface soils are highly vulnerable to multiple global change stressors associated with climate change and human activity; however, whether the impacts of this increasing number of stressors penetrate deeper soils remains virtually unknown. Here, we conducted a continental-scale survey of soil profiles (0-100 cm). Results showed that multiple stressors jointly affect multiple soil functions (from soil carbon sequestration to pathogen control) across top (0-30 cm), subsurface (30-60 cm) and deep soils (60-100 cm).

Drought-induced plant microbiome and metabolic enrichments improve drought resistance.

Plant-microbiome interactions are crucial in maintaining plant health and productivity under stress; however, little is known about these interactions under drought. Here, using wheat as a model, we combine genomics and culture-dependent methods to investigate the interactions between the soil, root, and rhizosphere microbiomes with rhizosphere metabolomes and plant phenotypes. We find that drought conditions promote microbial colonization in plant microbiomes, enriching Streptomyces coeruleorubidus and Leifsonia shinshuensis, while also increasing 4-oxoproline levels in the rhizosphere, potentially attracting S.

A Large Fraction of Soil Microbial Taxa Is Sensitive to Experimental Warming.

Global warming is expected to significantly impact the soil fungal and bacterial microbiomes, yet the predominant ecological response of microbial taxa-whether an increase, decrease, or no change-remains unclear. It is also unknown whether microbial taxa from different evolutionary lineages exhibit common patterns and what factors drive these changes. Here, we analyzed three mid-term (> 5 years) warming experiments across contrasting dryland and temperate-boreal ecosystems, encompassing over 500 topsoil samples collected across multiple time points.

Global patterns of nutrient limitation in soil microorganisms.

The availability of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) is essential for soil microbial activity and growth, yet global patterns of N and P limitation in soil microbial metabolism remain largely unknown. We modeled ecoenzyme stoichiometry data from 5,259 field observations of natural ecosystems to assess microbial N and P limitation in global surface soils. We found that microbial P limitation, which was especially strong at low latitudes, was more prevalent globally than microbial N limitation, which prevailed in cold environments.

Temperature thresholds induce abrupt shifts in biodiversity and ecosystem services in montane ecosystems worldwide.

Montane ecosystems are crucial for maintaining global biodiversity and function that sustain life on our planet. Yet, these ecosystems are highly vulnerable to changing temperatures and may undergo critical transitions under ongoing climate change. What we do not know is to what extent montane biodiversity and ecosystem services will respond to local temperature variations in a gradual versus abrupt manner across global environments.

Integrating ecological and evolutionary frameworks for SynCom success.

Use of synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) is a promising approach that harnesses nature-based solutions to support soil fertility and food security, mitigate climate change impacts, and restore terrestrial ecosystems. Several microbial products are in the market, and many others are at different stages of development and commercialization. Yet, we are still far from being able to fully harness the potential and successful applications of such biotechnological tools.

Soil organic carbon thresholds control fertilizer effects on carbon accrual in croplands worldwide.

Initiatives to restore soil fertility and mitigate global warming rely on rebuilding soil organic carbon (SOC). Nitrogen (N) fertilization is crucial for crop yields but affects SOC unpredictably due to varying responses of particulate organic carbon (POC) and mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) pools to initial SOC levels. To clarify these effects, here, by combining a global meta-analysis with continental-scale field experiments, we determine that an initial SOC threshold of 15 g C kg controls the effect of N fertilization on POC and MAOC.

Soil biodiversity and function under global change.

Soil organisms represent the most abundant and diverse organisms on the planet and support almost every ecosystem function we know, and thus impact our daily lives. Some of these impacts have been well-documented, such as the role of soil organisms in regulating soil fertility and carbon sequestration; processes that have direct implications for essential ecosystem services including food security and climate change mitigation. Moreover, soil biodiversity also plays a critical role in supporting other aspects from One Health-the combined health of humans, animals, and the environment-to the conservation of historic structures such as monuments.

Limited Effect of Biodiversity on the Multifunctionality of a Revegetated Riparian Ecosystem.

Vegetation and microbial diversity play an essential role in ecosystem function. Active ecosystem restoration costs millions of dollars to increase biodiversity, yet when and how this restoration is effective when aiming at restoring multiple ecosystem functions (EMF) is still under debate. Here, we investigated the influence of a decade of restoration practices (i.

Fire-driven disruptions of global soil biochemical relationships.

Fires alter the stability of organic matter and promote soil erosion which threatens the fundamental coupling of soil biogeochemical cycles. Yet, how soil biogeochemistry and its environmental drivers respond to fire remain virtually unknown globally. Here, we integrate experimental observations and random forest model, and reveal significant divergence in the responses of soil biogeochemical attributes to fire, including soil carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) contents worldwide.

Novel adaptive immune systems in pristine Antarctic soils.

Antarctic environments are dominated by microorganisms, which are vulnerable to viral infection. Although several studies have investigated the phylogenetic repertoire of bacteria and viruses in these poly-extreme environments with freezing temperatures, high ultra violet irradiation levels, low moisture availability and hyper-oligotrophy, the evolutionary mechanisms governing microbial immunity remain poorly understood. Using genome-resolved metagenomics, we test the hypothesis that Antarctic poly-extreme high-latitude microbiomes harbour diverse adaptive immune systems.

A Global Relationship Between Genome Size and Encoded Carbon Metabolic Strategies of Soil Bacteria.

Microbial traits are critical for carbon sequestration and degradation in terrestrial ecosystems. Yet, our understanding of the relationship between carbon metabolic strategies and genomic traits like genome size remains limited. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a global-scale meta-analysis of 2650 genomes, integrated whole-genome sequencing data, and performed a continental-scale metagenomic field study.

Dung predicts the global distribution of herbivore grazing pressure in drylands.

Dryland grazing sustains millions of people worldwide but, when poorly managed, threatens food security. Here we combine livestock and wild herbivore dung mass data from surveys at 760 dryland sites worldwide, representing independent measurements of herbivory, to generate high-resolution maps. We show that livestock and wild herbivore grazing is globally disconnected, and identify hotspots of herbivore activity across Africa, the Eurasian grasslands, India, Australia and the United States.

Global Relative Importance of Denitrification and Anammox in Microbial Nitrogen Loss Across Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecosystems.

Denitrification and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) are the major microbial processes responsible for global nitrogen (N) loss. Yet, the relative contributions of denitrification and anammox to N loss across contrasting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems worldwide remain unclear, hampering capacities to predict the human alterations in the global N cycle. Here, a global synthesis including 3240 observations from 199 published isotope pairing studies is conducted and finds that denitrification governs microbial N loss globally (79.

Long-term grazing effects on soil-borne pathogens are driven by temperature.

Soils support a highly diverse community of plant pathogens, which are highly responsive to global change. Climate and livestock grazing are the main global changes in grasslands, yet, how long-term grazing alone, and in interaction with climate, influence the distribution of soil-borne plant pathogens remain virtually unknown. Here, we present the first long-term regional-scale experimental investigation on the impacts of livestock grazing on soil-borne fungal plant pathogens and their association with plant community across 10 experimental sites spanning a climate gradient in the steppe in Northern China.

Extreme rainfall events eliminate the response of greenhouse gas fluxes to hydrological alterations and fertilization in a riparian ecosystem.

Riparian ecosystems are essential carbon dioxide (CO) sources, which considerably promotes climate warming. However, the other greenhouse gas fluxes (GHGs), such as methane (CH) and nitrous oxide (NO), in the riparian ecosystems have not been well studied, and it remains unclear whether and how these GHG fluxes respond to extreme weather, fertilization and hydrological alterations associated with reservoir management. Here, we assessed the impacts of hydrological alterations (i.