Anthropogenic climate change threatens ecosystem functioning. Soil biodiversity is essential for maintaining the health of terrestrial systems, but how climate change affects the richness and abundance of soil microbial communities remains unresolved. We examined the effects of warming, altered precipitation and annual biomass removal on grassland soil bacterial, fungal and protistan communities over 7 years to determine how these representative climate changes impact microbial biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. We show that experimental warming and the concomitant reductions in soil moisture play a predominant role in shaping microbial biodiversity by decreasing the richness of bacteria (9.6%), fungi (14.5%) and protists (7.5%). Our results also show positive associations between microbial biodiversity and ecosystem functional processes, such as gross primary productivity and microbial biomass. We conclude that the detrimental effects of biodiversity loss might be more severe in a warmer world.

人为气候变化威胁着生态系统的功能。土壤生物多样性对于维持陆地系统的健康至关重要，但气候变化如何影响土壤微生物群落的丰富度和丰度仍未得到解决。我们研究了 7 年来变暖、降水改变和年度生物量去除对草原土壤细菌、真菌和原生生物群落的影响，以确定这些具有代表性的气候变化如何影响微生物生物多样性和生态系统功能。我们表明，实验性变暖和随之而来的土壤水分减少通过减少细菌（9.6%）、真菌（14.5%）和原生生物（7.5%）的丰富度，在塑造微生物多样性方面发挥着主要作用。我们的结果还显示微生物多样性与生态系统功能过程之间存在正相关关系，如总初级生产力和微生物生物量。我们得出结论，生物多样性丧失的不利影响在温暖的世界中可能更为严重。