Journal ArticleDOI
Automated measurement of the respiratory response of soil microcompartments: Active microbial biomass in earthworm faeces
TLDR
The system was used to determine the active and total microbial biomass in soil and earthworm faecal particles and resulted in very different shapes to O 2 uptake curves, indicating damage to microorganisms due to sudden moisture alterations.Abstract:
A system to analyse the respiratory response of soil microcompartments by automated electrolytic microrespirometry is described. The system is computer controlled and allows simultaneous measurements of 16 samples. The minimum detection level is 0.83 μg O 2 and the capacity of the system can be extended up to about 2500 μg O 2 h − . The frequency of measurements is optional and ranges from about 10 s to 1 h. The system was used to determine the active and total microbial biomass in soil and earthworm [Aporrectodea caliginosa (Savigny)] faecal particles (mean age of 4 days) by the O 2 uptake method. Active microbial biomass was increased in earthworm faeces (+17%), but the percentages of active microorganisms were similar in faeces (5.0%) and soil (4.5%). Addition of diluted nutrients instead of dry matter resulted in very different shapes to O 2 uptake curves, indicating damage to microorganisms due to sudden moisture alterations. The usefulness of the microrespirometer system to investigate microbial properties of soil microcompartments is discussed.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Plant diversity increases soil microbial activity and soil carbon storage
Markus Lange,Nico Eisenhauer,Carlos A. Sierra,Holger Bessler,Christoph Engels,Robert I. Griffiths,Perla Griselle Mellado-Vázquez,Ashish A. Malik,Jacques Roy,Stefan Scheu,Sibylle Steinbeiss,Bruce C. Thomson,Susan E. Trumbore,Gerd Gleixner +13 more
TL;DR: It is shown that higher plant diversity increases rhizosphere carbon inputs into the microbial community resulting in both increased microbial activity and carbon storage, indicating that the increase in carbon storage is mainly limited by the integration of new carbon into soil and less by the decomposition of existing soil carbon.
Journal ArticleDOI
Bottom-up effects of plant diversity on multitrophic interactions in a biodiversity experiment
Christoph Scherber,Nico Eisenhauer,Nico Eisenhauer,Wolfgang W. Weisser,Bernhard Schmid,Winfried Voigt,Markus Fischer,Markus Fischer,Ernst Detlef Schulze,Christiane Roscher,Christiane Roscher,Alexandra Weigelt,Alexandra Weigelt,Eric Allan,Holger Bessler,Michael Bonkowski,Nina Buchmann,François Buscot,Lars W. Clement,Anne Ebeling,Anne Ebeling,Christof Engels,Stefan Halle,Ilona Kertscher,Alexandra-Maria Klein,Alexandra-Maria Klein,Robert Koller,Stephan König,Esther Kowalski,Volker Kummer,Annely Kuu,Markus Lange,Dirk Lauterbach,Cornelius Middelhoff,V. D. Migunova,Alexandru Milcu,Ramona Müller,Stephan Partsch,Jana S. Petermann,Jana S. Petermann,Carsten Renker,Carsten Renker,Tanja Rottstock,Alexander C.W. Sabais,Stefan Scheu,Jens Schumacher,Vicky M. Temperton,Teja Tscharntke +47 more
TL;DR: It is shown that plant diversity effects dampen with increasing trophic level and degree of omnivory, and the results suggest that plant Diversity has strong bottom-up effects on multitrophic interaction networks, with particularly strong effects on lower trophIC levels.
Journal ArticleDOI
An inter-laboratory comparison of ten different ways of measuring soil microbial biomass C
T. Beck,Rainer Georg Joergensen,Ellen Kandeler,Franz Makeschin,E. Nuss,H.R. Oberholzer,Stefan Scheu +6 more
TL;DR: The relationship between the basic FI method and the other methods was mainly affected by the respiration rate of non-fumigated soil, and the FI method is less suitable for the calibration of the FE and SIR methods in forest soils than in arable soils.
Journal ArticleDOI
Long-term organic farming fosters below and aboveground biota: Implications for soil quality, biological control and productivity
Klaus Birkhofer,T. Martijn Bezemer,Jaap Bloem,Michael Bonkowski,Soren Christensen,David Dubois,F. Ekelund,Andreas Fließbach,Lucie Gunst,Katarina Hedlund,Paul Mäder,Juha Mikola,Christophe Robin,Heikki Setälä,Fabienne Tatin-Froux,Wim H. van der Putten,Stefan Scheu +16 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated in a comprehensive way soil chemical, as well as below and aboveground biological parameters of two organic and two conventional wheat farming systems that primarily differed in fertilization and weed management strategies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Plant diversity effects on soil microorganisms support the singular hypothesis.
Nico Eisenhauer,Holger Bessler,Christof Engels,Gerd Gleixner,Maike Habekost,Alexandru Milcu,Stephan Partsch,Alexander C.W. Sabais,Christoph Scherber,Sibylle Steinbeiss,Alexandra Weigelt,Wolfgang W. Weisser,Stefan Scheu +12 more
TL;DR: Supporting the singular hypothesis for plant diversity, the results suggest that plant species are unique, each contributing to the functioning of the belowground system and reinforce the need for long-term biodiversity experiments to fully appreciate consequences of current biodiversity loss for ecosystem functioning.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
A physiological method for the quantitative measurement of microbial biomass in soils
TL;DR: The respiratory method provides reproducible estimates of biomass size within 1–3 h after soil amendment, and can be combined without difficulty with a selective inhibition method for determination of bacterial and fungal contributions to soil metabolism.
Journal ArticleDOI
Application of eco-physiological quotients (qCO2 and qD) on microbial biomasses from soils of different cropping histories
TL;DR: In this article, metabolic quotients for CO2 and microbial-C-loss were studied on soil microbial communities under long-term monoculture (M) or continuous crop rotations (CR).
Journal ArticleDOI
Interactions between earthworms and microorganisms in organic-matter breakdown
Clive A. Edwards,K.E. Fletcher +1 more
TL;DR: Earthworms have complex interactions with microorganisms that can lessen or increase plant disease attack, and some studies that show that earthworms can disperse pathogenic microorganisms and influence the viability of fungal spores and nematode cysts.
Journal ArticleDOI
Measurement of bacterial and fungal contributions to respiration of selected agricultural and forest soils.
J. P. E. Anderson,K. H. Domsch +1 more
TL;DR: The difficulties which had previously limited the use of selective inhibitors for in situ soil ecological investigations, such as insufficient inhibitor specificity, inhibitor inactivation or degradation, and errors of measurement caused by elimination of competitor populations, were either resolved or methodologically avoided in the experiments.