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Nitrogen and phosphorus additions interactively affected composition and carbon budget of soil nematode community in a temperate steppe

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Abstract

Purpose

Soil nematodes play a fundamental role in regulating ecosystem carbon and nutrient cycling. It is widely recognized that soil nematode community composition is sensitive to nutrient enrichment, but the linkage between community assembly processes and functional changes under nutrient enrichment condition remains poorly understood.

Methods

We examined the compositional and functional responses and quantified the role of main community assembly processes (genus losses, genus gains, and context-dependent variations of abundance) in driving the carbon budget of soil nematode communities in response to nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) addition in a temperate grassland.

Results

Nitrogen and P addition significantly interacted to affect nematodes abundance, biomass, and functional variables of C cycling, in that P addition increased all the variables under ambient N condition but not under N enriched condition. Soil pH, ammonium concentration, and total phosphorus concentration played important roles in driving the variations of nematode C budgets, indicating the minor role of plant community characteristics. The enhancement of all variables following P addition was caused by the increases in the abundance of common genera (e.g. Acrobeles, Scutylenchus, and Tylencholaimus). The variation of genus richness contributed to the P-induced increases of nematode abundance but not to the increases of carbon budgets.

Conclusions

Our results uncover the linkages between community assembly processes and the abundance and C cycling function of soil nematode community under nutrient enrichment conditions. The significant interactive effects between N and P addition highlight the complexity in predicting the compositional and functional changes in soil nematode community under a scenario of multiple-nutrient enrichment.

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Data availability

Data are available for scientific request.

Code availability

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Inner Mongolia Grassland Ecosystem Research Station for logistical support and the comments from two anonymous reviewers from constructive comments and suggestions. This work was supported by K.C.Wong Education Foundation (GJTD-2019-10), National Natural Science Foundation of China (31770503 and 31822006), Liaoning Revitalizing Talents Program (XLYC1807061), Basic Research Program of the Education Department of Liaoning Province (LJC202009), Science and Technology Plan Project of Liaoning Province (2019-ZD-0196), and Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (Y201832). Authors declare no conflict of interests.

Funding

K.C.Wong Education Foundation (GJTD-2019-10), National Natural Science Foundation of China (31770503 and 31822006), Liaoning Revitalizing Talents Program (XLYC1807061), Basic Research Program of the Education Department of Liaoning Province (LJC202009), Science and Technology Plan Project of Liaoning Province (2019-ZD-0196), and Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (Y201832).

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XTL and QL conceived this study. All the authors conducted the field works. ZWZ analyzed the samples and all the data. ZWZ, QL, and XTL wrote the draft with feedback from all other authors.

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Correspondence to Xiao-Tao Lü.

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Zhang, ZW., Li, Q., Hu, YY. et al. Nitrogen and phosphorus additions interactively affected composition and carbon budget of soil nematode community in a temperate steppe. Plant Soil 473, 109–121 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-021-05145-y

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