Soil microorganisms are key to biological diversity and many ecosystem processes in terrestrial ecosystems. Despite the current alarming loss of plant diversity, it is unclear how plant species ...diversity affects soil microorganisms. By conducting a global meta-analysis with paired observations of plant mixtures and monocultures from 106 studies, we show that microbial biomass, bacterial biomass, fungal biomass, fungi:bacteria ratio, and microbial respiration increase, while Gram-positive to Gram-negative bacteria ratio decrease in response to plant mixtures. The increases in microbial biomass and respiration are more pronounced in older and more diverse mixtures. The effects of plant mixtures on all microbial attributes are consistent across ecosystem types including natural forests, planted forests, planted grasslands, croplands, and planted containers. Our study underlines strong relationships between plant diversity and soil microorganisms across global terrestrial ecosystems and suggests the importance of plant diversity in maintaining belowground ecosystem functioning.
Abstract
Plant and soil C:N:P ratios are of critical importance to productivity, food-web dynamics, and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Plant diversity continues to decline ...globally; however, its influence on terrestrial C:N:P ratios remains uncertain. By conducting a global meta-analysis of 2049 paired observations in plant species mixtures and monocultures from 169 sites, we show that, on average across all observations, the C:N:P ratios of plants, soils, soil microbial biomass and enzymes did not respond to species mixture nor to the species richness in mixtures. However, the mixture effect on soil microbial biomass C:N changed from positive to negative, and those on soil enzyme C:N and C:P shifted from negative to positive with increasing functional diversity in mixtures. Importantly, species mixture increased the C:N, C:P, N:P ratios of plants and soils when background soil C:N, C:P, and N:P were low, but decreased them when the respective background ratios were high. Our results demonstrate that plant mixtures can balance terrestrial plant and soil C:N:P ratios dependent on background soil C:N:P. Our findings highlight that plant diversity conservation does not only increase plant productivity, but also optimizes ecosystem stoichiometry for the diversity and productivity of today’s and future vegetation.
Phytohormones are critical in various aspects of plant biology such as growth regulations and defense strategies against pathogens. Plant-virus interactions retard plant growth through rapid ...alterations in phytohormones and their signaling pathways. Recent research findings show evidence of how viruses impact upon modulation of various phytohormones affecting plant growth regulations. The opinion is getting stronger that virus-mediated phytohormone disruption and alteration weaken plant defense strategies through enhanced replication and systemic spread of viral particles. These hormones regulate plant-virus interactions in various ways that may involve antagonism and cross talk to modulate small RNA (sRNA) systems. The article aims to highlight the recent research findings elaborating the impact of viruses upon manipulation of phytohormones and virus biology.
Plants in infertile habitats are thought to have a high rate of nutrient resorption to enable them reuse nutrients more efficiently than those in fertile habitats. However, there is still much debate ...on how plant nutrient resorption responds to nutrient availability. Here we used a meta-analysis from a global data set of 9703 observations at 306 sites from 508 published articles to examine the effects of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) fertilization on plant foliar N and P concentrations and resorption efficiency. We found that N fertilization enhanced N concentration in green leaves by 27% and P fertilization enhanced green-leaf P by 73% on average. The N and P concentrations in senesced leaves also increased with respective nutrient fertilization. Resorption efficiencies (percentage of nutrient recovered from senescing leaves) of both N and P declined in response to respective nutrient fertilization. Combined N and P fertilization also had negative effects on both N and P resorption efficiencies. Whether nutrient resorption efficiency differs among plant growth types and among ecosystems, however, remains uncertain due to the limited sample sizes when analyzed by plant growth types or ecosystem types. Our analysis indicates that fertilization decreases plant nutrient resorption and the view that nutrient resorption is a critical nutrient conservation strategy for plants in nutrient-poor environments cannot be abandoned. The response values to fertilization presented in our analysis can help improve biogeochemical models.
High kinetics oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysts under low temperature are critical and highly desired for temperature‐tolerant energy conversion and storage devices, but remain ...insufficiently investigated. Herein, oxygen vacancy‐rich porous perovskite oxide (CaMnO3) nanofibers coated with reduced graphene oxide coating (V‐CMO/rGO) are developed as the air electrode catalyst for low‐temperature and knittable Zn–air batteries. V‐CMO/rGO exhibits top‐level ORR activity among perovskite oxides and shows impressive kinetics under low temperature. Experimental and theoretical calculation results reveal that the synergistic effect between metal atoms and oxygen vacancies, as well as the accelerated kinetics and enhanced electric conductivity and mass transfer over the rGO coated nanofiber 3D network contribute to the enhanced catalytic activity. The desorption of ORR intermediate is promoted by the regulated electron filling. The V‐CMO/rGO drives knittable and flexible Zn–air batteries under a low temperature of −40 °C with high peak power density of 56 mW cm−2 and long cycle life of over 80 h. This study provides insight of kinetically active catalyst and facilitates the ZABs application in harsh environment.
The oxygen reduction reaction kinetics of a perovskite oxide is significantly promoted by a facile metal–vacancy strategy. The newly developed vacancy‐rich porous perovskite nanofibers exhibit comparable activities to the commercial Pt/C and even surpass it under low temperature. The developed catalyst can drive knittable fibrous‐type and sandwich‐type zinc–air batteries under low temperature of −40 °C with impressive performance.
Soil microbes comprise a large portion of the genetic diversity on Earth and influence a large number of important ecosystem processes. Increasing atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition represents a ...major global change driver; however, it is still debated whether the impacts of N deposition on soil microbial biomass and respiration are ecosystem-type dependent. Moreover, the extent of N deposition impacts on microbial composition remains unclear. Here we conduct a global meta-analysis using 1408 paired observations from 151 studies to evaluate the responses of soil microbial biomass, composition, and function to N addition. We show that nitrogen addition reduced total microbial biomass, bacterial biomass, fungal biomass, biomass carbon, and microbial respiration. Importantly, these negative effects increased with N application rate and experimental duration. Nitrogen addition reduced the fungi to bacteria ratio and the relative abundances of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and gram-negative bacteria and increased gram-positive bacteria. Our structural equation modeling showed that the negative effects of N application on soil microbial abundance and composition led to reduced microbial respiration. The effects of N addition were consistent across global terrestrial ecosystems. Our results suggest that atmospheric N deposition negatively affects soil microbial growth, composition, and function across all terrestrial ecosystems, with more pronounced effects with increasing N deposition rate and duration.
Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity can be effectively tuned by modulating the electron configuration and optimizing the chemical bonds. Herein, a general strategy to optimize the activity of ...metal single‐atoms is achieved by the decoration of metal clusters via a coating–pyrolysis–etching route. In this unique structure, the metal clusters are able to induce electron redistribution and modulate M−N species bond lengths. As a result, M‐ACSA@NC exhibits superior ORR activity compared with the nanoparticle‐decorated counterparts. The performance enhancement is attributed to the optimized intermediates desorption benefiting from the unique electronic configuration. Theoretical analysis reinforces the significant roles of metal clusters by correlating the ORR activity with cluster‐induced charge transfer. As a proof‐of‐concept, various metal–air batteries assembled with Fe‐ACSA@NC deliver remarkable power densities and capacities. This strategy is an effective and universal technique for electron modulation of M−N−C, which shows great potential in application of energy storage devices.
A general strategy of metal clusters regulating metal single‐atom sites is developed to boost the activities of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysts (Fe, Co, Ni). Benefiting from the electron redistribution between active sites and substrate, the optimized catalyst exhibits remarkable activity with a half‐wave potential of 0.9 V vs. RHE and achieves high discharge voltages in various metal–air batteries.
Despite the mounting evidence for positive diversity–productivity relationships found in controlled experiments, diversity effects on productivity in natural systems remain hotly debated. ...Understanding the multivariate links between diversity and productivity in natural systems, in particular natural forests that host the majority of terrestrial biodiversity and provide essential services for humanity, remains a critical challenge for ecologists. We analysed data from 448 plots of varying tree species diversity, stand ages and local nutrient availability in Canada's boreal forest (52°30′–55°24′ N latitude and 102°36′–108° W longitude). We used structural equation models to link multivariate relationships between above‐ground biomass, tree species diversity, stand age and soil nutrient availability. Above‐ground biomass increased with diversity indirectly via increasing tree size inequality, increased with stand age and was higher on sites of medium soil nutrient regime directly as well as indirectly via increased tree size inequality. Synthesis. Our results demonstrate positive diversity effects on above‐ground biomass in natural forests of diverse forest ages and soil resource availability. Furthermore, we show that tree size inequality acts as a mechanism for the positive diversity effects on above‐ground biomass and as a mechanism in regulating above‐ground biomass and species diversity simultaneously via interactions among individuals in natural forests.
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