Stable states in an unstable landscape: microbial resistance at the front line of climate change
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Microbiome responses to warming may amplify or ameliorate terrestrial carbon loss and thus are a critical unknown in predicting climate outcomes. We quantified microbial warming response over seven years in a thawing permafrost peatland, using large-scale multi-omics data. We integrated analyses of organisms (via taxonomy), functions (via metabolic pathways and proteins), and community organization (via network structure and ecological assembly) to deeply characterize response mechanisms. This revealed unexpected and comprehensive microbiome stability. This resistance to change appeared bolstered by habitat-specific dispersal and community-level functional redundancy, particularly via versatile carbon generalists. Our findings challenge widespread assumptions of significant soil microbiome alteration with climate change, and reveal key genome-inferred processes that underlie microbiome stability. This suggests that future research should reorient towards critical habitat transitions.
One Sentence Summary
In a warming permafrost peatland, microbiome shifts are concerted and correspond to habitat change, rather than proceeding gradually with rising temperature, with multiple lines of evidence indicating that this microbiome ecological resistance is linked to functional redundancy and high dispersal.
