A simple pyrocosm for studying soil microbial response to fire reveals a rapid, massive response by Pyronema species

PloS One
Thomas D BrunsSydney Glassman

Abstract

We have designed a pyrocosm to enable fine-scale dissection of post-fire soil microbial communities. Using it we show that the peak soil temperature achieved at a given depth occurs hours after the fire is out, lingers near this peak for a significant time, and is accurately predicted by soil depth and the mass of charcoal burned. Flash fuels that produce no large coals were found to have a negligible soil heating effect. Coupling this system with Illumina MiSeq sequencing of the control and post-fire soil we show that we can stimulate a rapid, massive response by Pyronema, a well-known genus of pyrophilous fungus, within two weeks of a test fire. This specific stimulation occurs in a background of many other fungal taxa that do not change noticeably with the fire, although there is an overall reduction in richness and evenness. We introduce a thermo-chemical gradient model to summarize the way that heat, soil depth and altered soil chemistry interact to create a predictable, depth-structured habitat for microbes in post-fire soils. Coupling this model with the temperature relationships found in the pyrocosms, we predict that the width of a survivable "goldilocks zone", which achieves temperatures that select for postfire-adapt...Continue Reading

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Oct 17, 2015·The ISME Journal·Sydney I GlassmanThomas D Bruns

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Citations

Aug 15, 2020·Frontiers in Microbiology·Noemi ProcopioMichael Buckley
Oct 10, 2020·Environmental Microbiology·Andrei S SteindorffIgor V Grigoriev

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Datasets Mentioned

BETA
MN724033-MN724919

Methods Mentioned

BETA
Illumina sequencing
dissect

Software Mentioned

QIIME
Pyronema
Excel
R
Adonis
UPARSE

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