DOI: 10.5061/dryad.qz612jmp3
title: Soil organic carbon loss decreases biodiversity but stimulates multitrophic interactions that promote belowground metabolism

description: Soil organic carbon (SOC) plays an essential role in mediating community
 structure and metabolic activities of belowground biota. Unraveling the
 evolution of belowground communities and their feedback mechanisms on SOC
 dynamics helps embed the ecology of soil microbiome into carbon cycling,
 which serves to improve biodiversity conservation and carbon management
 strategy under global change. Here, croplands with a SOC gradient were
 used to understand how belowground metabolisms and SOC decomposition were
 linked to the diversity, composition, and co-occurrence networks of
 belowground communities encompassing archaea, bacteria, fungi, protists,
 and invertebrates. As SOC decreased, the diversity of prokaryotes and
 eukaryotes also decreased, but their network complexity showed contrasting
 patterns: prokaryotes increased due to intensified niche overlap, while
 that of eukaryotes decreased possibly because of greater dispersal
 limitation owing to the breakdown of macro aggregates. Despite the
 decrease in biodiversity and SOC stocks, the belowground metabolic
 capacity was enhanced as indicated by increased enzyme activity and
 decreased enzymatic stoichiometric imbalance. This could, in turn,
 expedite carbon loss through respiration, particularly in the slow-cycling
 pool. The enhanced belowground metabolic capacity was dominantly driven by
 greater multitrophic network complexity and particularly negative
 (competitive and predator-prey) associations, which fostered the stability
 of the belowground metacommunity. Interestingly, soil abiotic conditions
 including pH, aeration, and nutrient stocks, exhibited a less significant
 role. Overall, this study reveals a greater need for soil C resources
 across multitrophic levels to maintain metabolic functionality as
 declining SOC results in biodiversity loss. Our researchers highlight the
 importance of integrating belowground biological processes into models of
 SOC turnover, to improve agroecosystem functioning and carbon management
 in the face of intensifying anthropogenic land-use and climate change.
description: | README.txt file  | | |
 :----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | | GENERAL INFORMATION | | | | | | 1. Title of Dataset: Data from: Soil organic carbon loss decreases biodiversity but stimulates multitrophic interactions that promote belowground metabolism | | | | | | 2. Author Information: | | | First author 1 | | | Name: Ye Li | | | Institution: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China | | | | | | Corresponding author 2 | | | Name: Zengming Chen | | | Institution: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China | | | Email: zmchen\@issas.ac.cn | | | | | | Co-author 3 | | | Name: Cameron Wagg | | | Institution: Fredericton Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Fredericton, Canada | | | | | | Co-author 4 | | | Name: Michael J. Castellano | | | Institution: Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA | | | | | | Co-author 5 | | | Name: Nan Zhang | | | Institution: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China; School of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, China | | | | | | Co-author 6 | | | Name: Weixin Ding | | | Institution: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China | | | | | | 3. Date of data collection: 2019-2023 | | | | | | 4. Geographic location of data collection: Baoqing county, in the east of Heilongjiang Province, northeast China (46°20’N, 132°12’E, elevation 70-75 m). | | | | | | 5. Funding sources that supported the collection of the data: National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFD1500303), Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA28010302), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20211610), Natural Science Foundation of China (42077029, U1906220), Frontier Project from the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISSASIP2212), and Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2022313). | | | | | | 6. Recommended citation for this dataset: Li et al. (2024), Data from: Soil organic carbon loss decreases biodiversity but stimulates multitrophic interactions that promote belowground metabolism, Dryad, Dataset. | | | | | | | | | DATA FILES | | | | | | File: Belowground metabolism and SOC decomposition | | | Details: total enzyme activities, C and N/P limitations and SOC decomposition | | | | | | File: Biodiversity | | | Details: the richess, Shannon and Simpson indices | | | | | | File: Edaphic condition | | | Details: soil physicochemical factors | | | | | | File: Topological features | | | Details: Topological features of multitrophic networks | | | | | | VARIABLE LIST AND ABBREVIATION | | | | | | SOC | content of soil organic carbon | | C limitation | limitation of carbon in belowground metabolic activities calculated from vector length in enzymatic stochiometry | | P/N limitation | limitation of phosphorus or nitrogen  in belowground metabolic activities calculated from vector angle in enzymatic stochiometry | | TN | content of total nitrogen | | TP | content oftotal phosphorus | | Zi | the sum of Z-score of enzyme activities | | C/N | ratio of soil organic matter to total nitrogen | | C/P | ratio of soil organic matter to total phosphorus | | AP | content of available phosphorus | | NH4+ | content of ammonium | | NO3- | content of nitrate | | nodes\_num | the number of ASVs included in networks | | edge\_number | the number of connections among all nodes | | neg\_pos | the ratio of negative to positive connections | | average\_degree | mean connections of all nodes with another unique node | | average\_path\_length | mean network distance between all paired nodes | | clustering\_coefficient | the degree of nodes clumping | | betweenness\_centralization | the times of a specific node acting as a bridge along the shortest path between another paired nodes | | closeness\_centralization | inverse of the average distance of a specific node to any other nodes | | degree\_centralization | evenness of connections among nodes in a network | | HC | samples with SOC content above 23 g C kg-1 | | LC | samples with SOC content below 23 g C kg-1 |