Response of the soil food web to warming and litter removal in the Tibetan Plateau, China

Both climate warming and litter removal alter soil nematode communities and the structure, stability, and function of soil food webs. The soil nematode metabolic carbon footprint, based on nematode biomass and respiration, can be used to indicate ecosystem function and the response of nematodes to nutrient enrichment in the ecosystem. However, it is unclear whether or how climate warming and litter removal affect the metabolic carbon footprint of soil nematodes and soil food webs. In this study, we investigated four warming and litter removal treatments in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China, to determine the effects of climate warming and litter removal on soil microbial food webs. The treatments included: (1) control (CK), (2) warming, (3) litter removal, (4) warming + litter removal. We found that warming and litter removal had significant negative effects on the diversity and richness of soil nematodes. In addition, our results showed warming indirectly and directly affected vegetation diversity, thereby altering soil nematode diversity. Vegetation played an important role in the maintenance of soil nematode community diversity. The enrichment and structural footprints reflected nematodes that could respond most rapidly to resource enrichment and those with higher trophic levels in soil food webs, respectively. Overall, warming and litter removal significantly negatively affect the enrichment metabolic footprint, indicating they could significantly reduce the external resource inputs into the food web. Both warming and litter removal reduced the structural metabolic footprint of the soil food web, although the changes were not significant, indicating that the metabolic activity of nematodes of high nutrient levels decreased and the ability to regulate the food web from top-bottom effects was weakened under warming and litter removal. The nematode functional metabolic footprints indicated that litter removal could aggravate the effect of warming on the soil food web and result in more severe degradation. The combination of warming and litter removal significantly inhibited the connectance of the bacterial channel, but had no significant effect on the fungal channel. These results suggest that the soil food web enhanced resistance to the environment by increasing the proportion of the fungal channel. It is critical to understand the responses of soil food webs to climate warming and litter removal to better predict how ecosystem functions will change in the future.