| Summary: | Soil respiration represents a major carbon flux between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere, and is expected to accelerate under climate warming. Despite its importance in climate change forecasts, however, our understanding of the effects of temperature on soil respiration (RS) is incomplete. Using a metabolic ecology approach we link soil biota metabolism, community composition and heterotrophic activity, to predict RS rates across five biomes. We find that accounting for the ecological mechanisms underpinning decomposition processes predicts climatological RS variations observed in an independent dataset (n = 312). The importance of community composition is evident because without it RS is substantially underestimated. With increasing temperature, we predict a latitudinal increase in RS temperature sensitivity, with Q10 values ranging between 2.33 ±0.01 in tropical forests to 2.72 ±0.03 in tundra. This global trend has been widely observed, but has not previously been linked to soil communities. Soil Biota Metabolic DataBody mass and temperature dependence of individual metabolic rates for fourteen soil biota groups.JohnstonSiblySoilBiotaMetabolicData.csvSoil Respiration DataSoil respiration rates, heterotrophic respiration rates and Q10 values with mean annual temperature across five biomes.JohnstonSiblySoilRespirationData.csvSoil Biota Abundance DataPopulation abundance and biomass dataset for thirteen soil biota groups across five biomes.JohnstonSiblySoilBiotaAbundanceData.csvDataset ReferencesReferences for all studies mentioned in the three datasets for: Johnston, A.S.A & Sibly, R.M. The influence of soil communities on the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration.JohnstonSiblyDatasetReferences.csv
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