Effects of long term CO2 enrichment on microbial community structure in calcareous grassland

Elevated CO2 generally increases plant productivity, and has been found to alter plant community composition in many ecosystems. Because soil microbes depend on plant-derived C and are often associated with specific plant species, elevated CO2 has the potential to alter structure and functioning of soil microbial communities. We investigated soil microbial community structure of a species-rich semi-natural calcareous grassland that had been exposed to elevated CO2 (600 muL L-1) for 6 growing seasons. We analysed microbial community structure using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) profiles and DNA fingerprints obtained by Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (DGGE) of 16S rDNA fragments amplified by the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). PLFA profiles were not affected by CO2 enrichment and the ratio of fungal and bacterial PLFA did not change. Ordination analysis of DNA fingerprints revealed a significant relation between CO2 enrichment and variation in DNA fingerprints in summer (P = 0.01), but not in spring. This variation was due to changes in low-intensity bands, while dominant bands did not differ between CO2 treatments. Diversity of the bacterial community, as assessed by number of bands in DNA fingerprints and calculation of Shannon diversity indices, was not affected by elevated CO2. Overall, only minor effects on microbial community structure were detected, corroborating earlier findings that soil carbon inputs did probably change much less than suggested by plant photosynthetic responses.