Trade-off between microbial carbon use efficiency and specific nutrient-acquiring extracellular enzyme activities under reduced oxygen

Highlights

● Reduced oxygen increased microbial metabolic quotient (qCO₂).

● Reduced oxygen enhanced microbial specific C-, N- and P-acquiring enzyme activity.

● Reduced oxygen increased microbial C relative to N and P limitation.

● Reduced oxygen increased microbial N relative to P limitation.

● Specific enzyme activity was positively related to qCO₂ under reduced oxygen.

Abstract

Mangroves are one of the most ecologically sensitive ecosystems to global climate change, which have cascading impacts on soil carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycling. Moreover, mangroves are experiencing increasing N and P loadings and reduced oxygen availability due to intensified climate change and human activities. However, both direct and interactive effects of these perturbations on microbially mediated soil C, N and P cycling are poorly understood. Here, we simultaneously investigated the effects of N and P loadings and reduced oxygen on microbial biomass, microbial respiration, and extracellular enzyme activities (EEAs) in mangrove soils. We calculated the microbial metabolic quotient (qCO₂), which is regarded as a useful inverse metric of microbial C use efficiency (CUE). Our results show that reduced oxygen significantly increases both qCO₂ and microbial specific EEAs (enzyme activity per unit of microbial biomass) for C-, N- and P-acquisition regardless of N or P loadings. Furthermore, we found that qCO₂ positively correlated with microbial specific EEAs under reduced oxygen, whereas no clear relationship was detected under ambient oxygen. These results suggest that reduced oxygen increases microbial specific EEAs at the expense of increasing microbial respiration per unit biomass, indicating higher energy cost per unit enzyme production.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

reduced oxygen / extracellular enzyme / microbial respiration / nutrient acquisition / nutrient addition / mangrove

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Acknowledgments

Dr. Chen received funding from EU H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (No. 839806), Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond (AUFF-E-2019-7-1), Danish Independent Research Foundation (1127-00015B), and Nordic Committee of Agriculture and Food Research. Dr. Craig was supported by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) EAO Doctoral Training Partnership (NE/L002469/1). Dr. Cordero was supported by a Ramon Areces Foundation research Fellowship and BBSRC Discovery Fellowship (BB/S010661/1).

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