Loughborough University
Browse
Bullard_Elliott_et_al-2019-Journal_of_Geophysical_Research__Biogeosciences.pdf (16.54 MB)

Surface stability in drylands is influenced by dispersal strategy of soil bacteria

Download (16.54 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2019-09-13, 12:53 authored by David R Elliott, Andrew D Thomas, Craig L Strong, Joanna BullardJoanna Bullard
Microbial adaptations for survival and dispersal may directly influence landscape stability and potential for dust emission in drylands where biological soil crusts (biocrusts) protect mineral soil surfaces from wind erosion. In the Lake Eyre basin of central Australia we operated a wind tunnel on sandy soils and collected the liberated material, which was subjected to DNA sequencing to identify the microbial community composition. Microbial composition of entrained dust was compared with that of the source sand dune soil in addition to nearby claypan and nebkha soils, and water channels which together form a recycling sediment transport system. Wind was found to preferentially liberate 359 identified taxa from sand dunes whereas 137 identified taxa were found to resist wind erosion. Water channel communities included many taxa in common with the soil samples. We hypothesise that the ease with which soil microbes become airborne is often linked to whether the organism is adapted for dispersal by wind or vegetative growth, and that biocrust organisms found in water channels may sometimes use a fluvial dispersal strategy which exploits rare flooding events to rapidly colonise vast pans which are common in drylands. We explain likely geomorphic implications of microbial dispersal strategies 32 which are a consequence of organisms engineering the environment to provide their par33 ticular needs. By identifying microbes fitting expectations for these dispersal strategies 34 based on differential abundance analyses, we provide a new perspective for understanding 35 the role of microbiota in landscape stability.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences

Volume

124

Issue

11

Pages

3403-3418

Publisher

American Geophysical Union

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© American Geophysical Union

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Wiley under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2019-09-05

Publication date

2019-11-15

Copyright date

2019

ISSN

2169-8953

eISSN

2169-8961

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Joanna Bullard

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC