• Energy Research

Warming in subarctic ecosystems will be two-fold higher compared to lower latitudes under current climate change projections. While the effects of warming in northern ecosystems on plants and microorganisms have been extensively studied, the responses of soil fauna have received much less attention, despite their important role in regulating key soil processes. We analyzed the response of soil hexapod communities in a subarctic grassland exposed to a natural geothermal gradient in Iceland with increases of +3 and + 6 °C above ambient temperature. We characterized hexapod communities using environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding. We analyzed the amounts of microbial carbon (Cmic), microbial N (Nmic), dissolved organic C (DOC) and dissolved organic N (DON) and then assessed whether these variables could help to account for the compositional dissimilarity of ground hexapod communities across temperatures. The increases in soil temperature did lead to changes in the composition of hexapod communities. The compositional differences caused by +6 °C plots were correlated with a decrease in Cmic and Nmic, soil DOC and DON. Our results highlight the response of soil hexapods to warming, and their interaction with microbial biomass ultimately correlated with changes in the availabilities of soil C and N.

AbstractThe capacity to forecast the effects of climate change on biodiversity largely relies on identifying traits capturing mechanistic relationships with the environment through standardized field experiments distributed across relevant spatial scales. The effects of short‐term experimental manipulations on local communities may overlap with regional climate gradients that have been operating during longer time periods. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no studies simultaneously assessing such long‐term macroecological drivers with local climate manipulations.We analysed this issue with springtails (Class Collembola), one of the dominant soil fauna groups, in a standardized climate manipulation experiment conducted across six European countries encompassing broad climate gradients. We combined community data (near 20K specimens classified into 102 species) with 22 eco‐morphological traits and reconstructed their phylogenetic relationships to track the evolution of adaptations to live at different soil depths, which is key to cope with desiccation. We then applied joint species distribution models to investigate the combined effect of the regional aridity gradient with the local experimental treatment (drought and warming) over the assembly of springtail communities and tested for significant trait–environment relationships mediating their community‐level responses.Our results show (1) a convergent evolution in all three major collembolan lineages of species adapted to inhabit at different soil strata; (2) a clear signature of aridity selecting traits of more epigeic species at a biogeographical scale and (3) the association of short‐term experimental drought with traits related to more euedaphic life‐forms.The hemiedaphic condition would be the plesiomorphic state for Collembola while the adaptations for an epigeic life would have been secondarily gained. Epigeic springtails are not only more resistant to drought, but also have a higher dispersal capacity that allows them to seek more favourable micro‐habitats after experiencing drier conditions. The observed relative edaphization of the springtail communities after short‐term experimental drought may thus be a transient community response.The disparity between macroecological trends and fast community‐level responses after climate manipulations highlights the need of simultaneously assessing long‐term and short‐term drivers at broad spatial scales to adequately interpret trait–environment relationships and better forecast biodiversity responses to climate change.Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog.