Soil priming effects and involved microbial community along salt gradients

Abstract. Soil salinity mediates microorganisms and soil processes, like soil organic carbon (SOC) cycling. Yet, how soil salinity affects SOC mineralization via shaping bacterial community diversity and composition remains elusive. Therefore, soils were sampled along a salt gradient (salinity at 0.25 %, 0.58 %, 0.75 %, 1.00 %, and 2.64 %) and incubated for 90 d to investigate (i) SOC mineralization (i.e., soil priming effects induced by cottonseed meal, as substrate) and (ii) the responsible bacteria community by using high-throughput sequencing and natural abundance of 13C isotopes (to partition cottonseed-meal-derived CO2 and soil-derived CO2). We observed a negative priming effect during the first 28 d of incubation that turned to a positive priming effect after day 56. Negative priming at the early stage might be due to the preferential utilization of cottonseed meal. The followed positive priming decreased with the increase in salinity, which might be caused by the decreased α diversity of microbial communities in soil with high salinity. Specifically, soil pH and electrical conductivity (EC) along the salinity gradient were the dominant variables modulating the structure of the microbial community and consequently SOC priming (estimated by distance-based multivariate analysis and path analysis). By adopting two-way orthogonal projections to latent structures (O2PLS), priming effects were linked with specific microbial taxa; e.g., Proteobacteria (Luteimonas, Hoeflea, and Stenotrophomonas) were the core microbial genera that were attributed to the substrate-induced priming effects. Here, we highlight that the increase in salinity reduced the diversity of the microbial community and shifted dominant microorganisms (Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria: Luteimonas, Hoeflea, and Stenotrophomonas) that determined SOC priming effects, which provides a theoretical basis for understanding SOC dynamics and microbial drivers under the salinity gradient.