ArticleThe ISME journal2023
High intensity perturbations induce an abrupt shift in soil microbial state.
Article in The ISME journal, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- Agricultural soil microbiomes are structurally and functionally more resistant to warming than adjacent natural ecosystems.Nature food · 2026Pooled it
- Harnessing synthetic microbial communities for desert vegetation restoration.Synthetic and systems biotechnology · 2027Review
- Plant genotypic diversity and defoliation jointly shape root exudation, fungal communities, and carbon and nitrogen cycling.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Rainfall and Substrate Origin Driven Change of Ruminant Manure Microbiomes in Cyprus.Environmental microbiology reports · 2026Article
- Asynchronous recovery of canonical ammonia oxidizers and comammox drives post-drought NWorld journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Article
- A climate-sensitive, contemporary multi-sphere bacterial metacommunity across the Tibetan Plateau.National science review · 2026Article
- Foliar metal micronutrients reshape rhizosphere soil multifunctionality by filtering microbial life-history strategies.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2026Article
- Cross-stressor resilience of soil microbial growth and carbon metabolism under climate change.Ecology · 2026Article
- Engineering soil microbiomes for resistance.Nature food · 2026Article
- Dormancy as a Signature of Microbial Community Disassembly during Hydrological Collapse in a Desert Oasis.Microbial ecology · 2026Article
- Lignocellulose-mediated selection of potential halophilic PET-degrading enzymes from mangrove soil.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Assessing the Ecological Roles of Resistomes within Microbial Communities in Antibiotic-contaminated Ecosystems.Microbial ecology · 2026Review
- Grazer exclusion is associated with higher fast-cycling carbon pools but lower slow-cycling mineral-associated carbon across grasslands.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Disturbance reshapes functional redundancy and accelerates nitrification in soil nitrifying communities.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Drivers of rhizosphere bacterial communities inFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Frequent Droughts Reduce Carbon Stabilisation in Organo-Mineral Soils.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Belowground Communities in Lowlands Are Less Stable to Heat Extremes Across Seasons.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Long-Term Drought Persistently Shifts Plant and Soil Microbial Communities but Has Limited Impact on COGlobal change biology · 2025Article
- Arctic Soil C and N Cycling Are Linked With Microbial Adaptations During Drought.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Drought Intensity Shapes Soil Legacy Effects on Grassland Plant and Soil Microbial Communities and Their Responses to Future Drought.Global change biology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Soil microbial communities play a pivotal role in regulating ecosystem functioning. But they are increasingly being shaped by human-induced environmental change, including intense "pulse" perturbations, such as droughts, which are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change. While it is known that soil microbial communities are sensitive to such perturbations and that effects can be long-lasting, it remains untested whether there is a threshold in the intensity and frequency of perturbations that can trigger abrupt and persistent transitions in the taxonomic and functional characteristics of soil microbial communities. Here we demonstrate experimentally that intense pulses of drought equivalent to a 30-year drought event (<15% WHC) induce a major shift in the soil microbial community characterised by significantly altered bacterial and fungal community structures of reduced complexity and functionality. Moreover, the characteristics of this transformed microbial community persisted after returning soil to its previous moisture status. As a result, we found that drought had a strong legacy effect on bacterial community function, inducing an enhanced growth rate following subsequent drought. Abrupt transitions are widely documented in aquatic and terrestrial plant communities in response to human-induced perturbations. Our findings demonstrate that such transitions also occur in soil microbial communities in response to high intensity pulse perturbations, with potentially deleterious consequences for soil health.
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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.