Functional diversity of soil microbial communities increases with ecosystem development

TY - JOUR

T1 - Functional diversity of soil microbial communities increases with ecosystem development

AU - Sveen, Tord Ranheim

AU - Viketoft, Maria

AU - Bengtsson, Jan

AU - Strengbom, Joachim

AU - Lejoly, Justine

AU - Buegger, Franz

AU - Pritsch, Karin

AU - Fritscher, Joachim

AU - Hildebrand, Falk

AU - Osburn, Ernest

AU - Hannula, S. Emilia

AU - Bahram, Mo

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025.

PY - 2025/12

Y1 - 2025/12

N2 - Land abandonment is the single largest process of land-use change in the Global North driving succession and afforestation at continental scales, but assessing its impacts on soil microbial communities remains a challenge. Here, we establish a nationwide successional gradient of paired grassland and forest sites to track developments in microbial structure and functioning following land abandonment and gradual land-use change to forests. We show that microbes generally respond through threshold dynamics, leading to increasing functional but decreasing taxonomic diversity. Succession also entailed specialization of microbial nutrient (C-N-P) cycling genetic repertoires while decreasing genetic redundancy. This highlights a putative trade-off between two desirable ecosystem properties: functional diversity and functional redundancy. Fungal functional diversity underpins higher microbial C-cycling capacity, underscoring the link between functional traits and ecosystem processes. Changing litter quality similarly provides a mechanistic link between plant and microbial communities despite otherwise largely decoupled successional developments above- and belowground. While land abandonment is frequently touted as an opportunity to increase biodiversity and carbon storage, our results show that deeper knowledge about the multifaceted development of soil microbial communities and their links to plant communities during succession may be needed to fully grasp the impacts of global land abandonment processes.

AB - Land abandonment is the single largest process of land-use change in the Global North driving succession and afforestation at continental scales, but assessing its impacts on soil microbial communities remains a challenge. Here, we establish a nationwide successional gradient of paired grassland and forest sites to track developments in microbial structure and functioning following land abandonment and gradual land-use change to forests. We show that microbes generally respond through threshold dynamics, leading to increasing functional but decreasing taxonomic diversity. Succession also entailed specialization of microbial nutrient (C-N-P) cycling genetic repertoires while decreasing genetic redundancy. This highlights a putative trade-off between two desirable ecosystem properties: functional diversity and functional redundancy. Fungal functional diversity underpins higher microbial C-cycling capacity, underscoring the link between functional traits and ecosystem processes. Changing litter quality similarly provides a mechanistic link between plant and microbial communities despite otherwise largely decoupled successional developments above- and belowground. While land abandonment is frequently touted as an opportunity to increase biodiversity and carbon storage, our results show that deeper knowledge about the multifaceted development of soil microbial communities and their links to plant communities during succession may be needed to fully grasp the impacts of global land abandonment processes.

U2 - 10.1038/s41467-025-66544-8

DO - 10.1038/s41467-025-66544-8

M3 - Article

C2 - 41274910

AN - SCOPUS:105022741531

SN - 2041-1723

VL - 16

JO - Nature Communications

JF - Nature Communications

M1 - 10408

ER -