Roles of plants in controlling the response of soil bacterial community to climate warming on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

It is well-known that climate warming influences soil microbial communities. The effects are usually a comprehensive consequence of the direct and indirect effects of plants. Yet how plants influence the responses of soil microbes to climate warming remains largely unknown. In this study, a field warming experiment using infrared heaters was conducted on the eastern Tibetan Plateau to investigate the direct and indirect effects of climate warming on soil microbes. The bacterial communities in soil with and without plants under the control and warming treatments were analyzed using high-throughput sequencing. Bacterial diversity was higher in the planted treatments, and the bacterial communities were influenced by the growth of plants. The existence of plants significantly increased the dissimilarity of communities between the control and warming treatments. We concluded that plants can modify the responses of soil microbes to climate warming by changing the sensitivity of soil microbial community.