Core Project 8: Soil microbial diversity and community composition along land use gradients in the German Biodiversity Exploratories

• Applicants: Dr. Kezia Goldmann; Professor Dr. Michael Schloter; Dr. Stefanie Schulz; Dr. Selma Vieira, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology ; Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: since 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 193973307

The microbiome is a major driver for the ecosystem services provided by soils. At the same time, global change strongly affects the soil microbiome and its functions to a yet unknown extent. Since 2011, Core Project 8 has been generating a unique series of data on the structure and function of the soil microbiome, by establishing and applying a highly standardized set of methods covering metabarcoding based approaches as well as metagenomics. Based on these achievements, Core Project 8 will continue the high-throughput analysis of microbiota. All Experimental Plots (EPs) will be sampled in the framework of the general soil sampling campaign, which will again be organized in close cooperation with Core Project 9 in spring 2026. This will enable the analysis of long-term changes of the soil microbiome over 15 years and allow to identify its drivers in the different Exploratories. In addition, the newly established agricultural plots and the joint multi-site experiments REX, LUX and FOX, will be analysed to assess short-term changes of the soil microbiome in response to land use change. The focus will be given on bacteria, fungi, archaea and viruses, as well as on overall functional profiles of the microbiota. Furthermore, Core Project 8 provides high quality DNA and RNA extracts from the soil samplings to contributing projects. Soil aliquots and extracted nucleic acids will be stored in a biobank for future use. As a new service, Core Project 8 will also establish a catalog of metagenomics assembled genomes (MAGs) from all metagenomic data, as well as a culture collection of microbial isolates obtained from the different plots. The microbial data will be provided as a routine bioinformatic service to all Contributing Projects as well as synthesis proposals, in particular those where specific functional groups of microbiota will be of relevance. Thereby, the data generated in Core Project 8 will be important for downstream analysis of ecosystem multifunctionality and ecosystem services.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1374: Biodiversity Exploratories
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Jörg Overmann