ArticleThe ISME journal2020
Drought and plant litter chemistry alter microbial gene expression and metabolite production.
Article in The ISME journal, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Impact of drought on soil microbial biomass and extracellular enzyme activity.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Pooled it
- Article
- Reduced legacy precipitation decreases microbial community growth efficiency and alters soil organic carbon in a California grassland.Microbiome · 2026Article
- Soil Fauna Alter the Relationship Between Plant Litter Diversity and Microbial Communities in Mixed Litter Decomposition.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Effects of legume-based rotation on subsequent sorghum rhizosphere microbial communities and their drought tolerance-related genes.Environmental microbiome · 2026Article
- Fungal co-inoculation enhances drought tolerance and soil functioning during cyanobacterial biological soil crust development.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Plant microbiome engineering: from inoculation to genome editing.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Arctic Soil C and N Cycling Are Linked With Microbial Adaptations During Drought.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Rare and abundant taxa in Artemisia desertorum rhizosphere soils demonstrate disparate responses to drought stress.Advanced biotechnology · 2025Article
- Ecosystem Multifunctionality Regulated by Soil Microbial Activity and Indicator Taxa Versus Biodiversity for Industrial Solar Facilities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Ecological and evolutionary responses of earthworm holobionts to environmental changes.The ISME journal · 2025Review
- Long-term climate establishes functional legacies by altering microbial traits.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Climate history modulates stress responses of common soil bacteria under experimental drought.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- The six-year decomposition of coarse woody debris drives shifts in soil fungal communities in subtropical forests.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Structure and function of the topsoil microbiome in Chinese terrestrial ecosystems.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Growth rate as a link between microbial diversity and soil biogeochemistry.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Review
- Nutrient and moisture limitations reveal keystone metabolites linking rhizosphere metabolomes and microbiomes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Eco-evolutionary strategies for relieving carbon limitation under salt stress differ across microbial clades.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Article
- Bacterial population-level trade-offs between drought tolerance and resource acquisition traits impact decomposition.The ISME journal · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Drought represents a significant stress to microorganisms and is known to reduce microbial activity and organic matter decomposition in Mediterranean ecosystems. However, we lack a detailed understanding of the drought stress response of microbial decomposers. Here we present metatranscriptomic and metabolomic data on the physiological response of in situ microbial communities on plant litter to long-term drought in Californian grass and shrub ecosystems. We hypothesised that drought causes greater microbial allocation to stress tolerance relative to growth pathways. In grass litter, communities from the decade-long ambient and reduced precipitation treatments had distinct taxonomic and functional profiles. The most discernable physiological signatures of drought were production or uptake of compatible solutes to maintain cellular osmotic balance, and synthesis of capsular and extracellular polymeric substances as a mechanism to retain water. The results show a clear functional response to drought in grass litter communities with greater allocation to survival relative to growth that could affect decomposition under drought. In contrast, communities on chemically more diverse and complex shrub litter had smaller physiological differences in response to long-term drought but higher investment in resource acquisition traits across precipitation treatments, suggesting that the functional response to drought is constrained by substrate quality. Our findings suggest, for the first time in a field setting, a trade off between microbial drought stress tolerance, resource acquisition and growth traits in plant litter microbial communities.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.