In new microbial-biogeochemical models, microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) is often assumed to decline with increasing temperature. Under this assumption, soil carbon losses under warming are small because microbial biomass declines. Yet there is also empirical evidence that CUE may adapt (i.e., become less sensitive) to warming, thereby mitigating negative effects on microbial biomass. To a...

An assessment of roles of rhizospheric microbial diversity in plant growth is helpful in understanding plant-microbe interactions. Using random combinations of rhizospheric bacterial species at different richness levels, we analysed the contribution of species richness, compositions, interactions and identity on soil microbial respiration and plant biomass. We showed that bacterial inoculation ...

Bacterial response to alteration in C availability is important in understanding the microbial community structure and microbial interactions in soil ecosystems. Population dynamics of oligotrophic and copiotrophic bacteria in relation to soil C availability were examined and relationships between bacterial populations and water-extractable C, buffer-extractable C, mineralizable C or microbial ...

Fundamental features of microbial cellulose utilization are examined at successively higher levels of aggregation encompassing the structure and composition of cellulosic biomass, taxonomic diversity, cellulase enzyme systems, molecular biology of cellulase enzymes, physiology of cellulolytic microorganisms, ecological aspects of cellulase-degrading communities, and rate-limiting factors in nat...

The contamination of agricultural soils by heavy metals is a global problem. Soil texture as a biotic factor represents one of the most important factors that influences the distribution of organic matter and ultimately play decisive role in retention of heavy metals in soil ecosystem. The effects of heavy metals on soil microbial processes were investigated. Analytical grade sulphate and chlor...

We examined the effect of decomposing leaf litter and dissolved inorganic nutrients on the heterotrophic biofilm of submerged wood in streams with and without leaves. Leaf litter was excluded from one headwater stream in August 1993 at Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in the southern Appalachian Mountains. We compared microbial processes on wood in the litter-excluded stream to a reference stream ...

The fate of 15NH4-N labelled cattle slurry applied before sowing in September of a winter wheat crop was studied on a loamy sand soil. The aim was to quantify immobilization of slurry 4 into microbial biomass, the speed at which nitrate derived from the slurry NH4-N was transported down the soil profile, and the utilization of slurry 4 by the winter wheat crop. Cattle slurry was applied at a ra...

The rate of biomass production is a fundamental property of all organisms in nature, but it is an especially important parameter of microbes in natural aquatic environments. An estimate of microbial production can be used as a general index of microbial activity and specifically to calculate growth rates. Since many processes scale with it, biomass production can be used to obtain a first-order...

Land use intensification is associated with loss of biodiversity and altered ecosystem functioning. Until now most studies on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning focused on random loss of species, while loss of rare species that usually are the first to disappear received less attention. Here we test if the effect of rare microbial species loss on plant productivity ...