Experimental evidence for the impact of soil viruses on carbon cycling during surface plant litter decomposition

Michaeline B N Albright; La Verne Gallegos-Graves; Kelli L Feeser; Kyana Montoya; Joanne B Emerson; Migun Shakya; John Dunbar

doi:10.1038/s43705-022-00109-4

Experimental evidence for the impact of soil viruses on carbon cycling during surface plant litter decomposition

ISME Commun. 2022 Mar 16;2(1):24. doi: 10.1038/s43705-022-00109-4.

Authors

Michaeline B N Albright^{1

2}, La Verne Gallegos-Graves³, Kelli L Feeser³, Kyana Montoya³, Joanne B Emerson⁴, Migun Shakya³, John Dunbar³

Affiliations

¹ Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, US. malbright@allonnia.com.
² Allonnia LLC, Boston, MA, US. malbright@allonnia.com.
³ Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, US.
⁴ Department of Plant Pathology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, US.

Abstract

To date, the potential impact of viral communities on biogeochemical cycles in soil has largely been inferred from correlational evidence, such as virus-driven changes in microbial abundances, viral auxiliary metabolic genes, and links with soil physiochemical properties. To more directly test the impact of soil viruses on carbon cycling during plant litter decomposition, we added concentrated viral community suspensions to complex litter decomposer communities in 40-day microcosm experiments. Microbial communities from two New Mexico alpine soils, Pajarito (PJ) and Santa Fe (SF), were inoculated onto grass litter on sand, and three treatments were applied in triplicate to each set of microcosms: addition of buffer (no added virus), live virus (+virus), or killed-virus (+killed-virus) fractions extracted from the same soil. Significant differences in respiration were observed between the +virus and +killed-virus treatments in the PJ, but not the SF microcosms. Bacterial and fungal community composition differed significantly by treatment in both PJ and SF microcosms. Combining data across both soils, viral addition altered links between bacterial and fungal diversity, dissolved organic carbon and total nitrogen. Overall, we demonstrate that increasing viral pressure in complex microbial communities can impact terrestrial biogeochemical cycling but is context-dependent.

Abstract

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