Seasonal effects of long-term warming on ecosystem function and bacterial diversity

Across biomes, soil biodiversity promotes ecosystem functions. However, whether this relationship will be maintained within ecosystems under climate change is uncertain. Here, using two long-term soil warming experiments, we investigated how warming affects the relationship between ecosystem functions and bacterial diversity across seasons, soil horizons, and warming duration. Soils were sampled from these warming experiments located at the Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, where soils had been heated +5°C above ambient for 13 or 28 years at the time of sampling. We assessed seven measurements representative of different ecosystem functions and nutrient pools. We also surveyed bacterial community diversity. We found that ecosystem function was significantly affected by season, with autumn samples having a higher intercept than summer samples in our model, suggesting a higher overall baseline of ecosystem function in the fall. The effect of warming on bacterial diversity was similarly affected by season, where warming in the summer was associated with decreased bacterial evenness in the organic horizon. Despite the decreased bacterial evenness in the warmed plots, we found that the relationship between ecosystem function and bacterial diversity was unaffected by warming or warming duration. Our findings highlight that season is a consistent driver of ecosystem function as well as a modulator of climate change effects on bacterial community evenness.