Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

Fungal Community Response To Long-Term Soil Warming With Potential Implications For Soil Carbon Dynamics, Gregory J. Pec, Linda T. A. Van Diepen, Melissa Knorr, A. Staurt Grandy, Jerry M. Melillo, Kristen M. Deangelis, Jeffery L. Blanchard, Serita D. Frey

Microbiology Department Faculty Publication Series

The direction and magnitude of climate warming effects on ecosystem processes such as carbon cycling remain uncertain. Soil fungi are central to these processes due to their roles as decomposers of soil organic matter, as mycorrhizal symbionts, and as determinants of plant diversity. Yet despite their importance to ecosystem functioning, we lack a clear understanding of the long-term response of soil fungal communities to warming. Toward this goal, we characterized soil fungal communities in two replicated soil warming experiments at the Harvard Forest (Petersham, Massachusetts, USA) which had experienced 5 degrees C above ambient soil temperatures for 5 and 20 …