2025-06-112025-06-112024-11-05Stewart, J., Lima, N.M.d., Kingsford, R. y Muñoz Rojas, M. (2024). Soil Bacterial Biodiversity in Drylands Is Dependent onGroundcover Under Increased Temperature. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture and Environment, 3 (4), e70027. https://doi.org/10.1002/sae2.70027.2767-035Xhttps://hdl.handle.net/11441/174204Introduction: Drylands are a major terrestrial biome, supporting much of the earth's population. Soil microbial communitiesmaintain drylands’ ecosystem functions but are threatened by increasing temperature. Groundcover, such as vegetation orbiocrust, drives the patchiness of drylands' soil microbial communities, reflected in fertile islands and rhizosphere soil microbialassociations. Groundcover may shelter soil microbial communities from increasingly harsh temperatures under climate change,mitigating effects on microclimate, but few data on the microbial response exists. Understanding the fine‐scale interactionsbetween plants and soil is crucial to improving conservation and management of drylands under climate change.Materials and Methods: We used open‐top chambers to experimentally increase the temperature on five key groundcoverspecies found in arid Australia, and are commonly present in drylands worldwide; bareground (controls), biocrust, perennialgrass, Maireana sp. shrub, Acacia aneura trees, testing soil bacterial diversity and community composition response to theeffects of increased temperatures.Results: We found that groundcover was a stronger driver of soil bacterial composition than increased temperature, but thisresponse varied with groundcover type. Larger groundcover types (Acacia and Maireana) buffered the impact of heat stress onthe soil bacterial community. Bacterial diversity and species richness declined with heat stress affecting the bacterial com-munities associated with perennial grass, Maireana and Acacia. We identified 16 bacterial phyla significantly associated withgroundcover types in ambient treatment. But, under heat stress, only three phyla, Verrumicrobiota, Patescibacteria, andAbditibacteriota, had significantly different relative abundance under groundcovers, Acacia and Maireana, compared tobareground controls. The soil bacterial community associated with perennial grass was most affected by increased temperature.Conclusion: Our findings suggest soil communities may become more homogeneous under climate change, with composi-tional change, rather than diversity, tracking soil response to heat stress.application/pdf13 p.engAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Arid ecologyClimate changeEcosystem functionGlobal warmingSoil microbial communitySoil microbial diversityinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess10.1002/sae2.70027