2025/02/07 by Dylan Cronin, Hannah Holland‐Moritz, Derek A. Smith +18 · 2 voices · 7 citations
Environmental Science · Mathematics · Medicine · #Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact #Archaeology #Biology #Climate change #Climatology #Ecology #Environmental resource management #Environmental science #Front (military) #Front line #Geography #Geology #Geometry #Line (geometry) #Mathematics #Meteorology #Resistance (ecology) #Zoonotic diseases and public health
paper · doi:10.1101/2025.02.07.636677
published in bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
openalex publication_date 2025/02/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Abstract Microbiome responses to warming may amplify or ameliorate terrestrial carbon loss and thus are a critical unknown in predicting climate outcomes. Because the rapid thaw of permafrost peatlands makes a very large store of soil carbon available to microbial metabolism, understanding microbiome dynamics in these systems is particularly urgent. We quantified microbial warming response over seven years across three habitats in a thawing permafrost peatland, using large-scale multi-omics data. We integrated analyses of organisms (via taxonomy), functions (via metabolic pathways and proteins), and community organization (via network structure and ecological assembly) to deeply characterize response mechanisms. We consistently found a pattern of within-habitat microbiome stability, with virtually no signal of gradual change in the warming period studied. The resistance to change appeared bolstered by habitat-specific dispersal processes and community-level functional redundancy, particularly via versatile carbon generalists. Our findings also reveal key genome-inferred metabolic processes that underlie microbiome stability. Together, our results highlight the importance of understanding the limits of these stabilizing processes and suggest that future research should reorient towards critical habitat transitions.