Microbial carbon and nitrogen use efficiencies (CUE and NUE) are critical regulators of soil carbon and nitrogen cycling, with their temperature sensitivities playing a pivotal role in mediating biogeochemical feedbacks under global warming. However, how the temperature sensitivity ( Q 10 ) of CUE and NUE varies at different temperature ranges and whether their thermal responses are coordinated remains poorly understood. Here,...

Purpose This study evaluated the responses of water use efficiency (WUE), biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) and growth of understory Acacia leiocalyx and A. disparimma to the biochar addition and prescribed burning for 9–22 months in a suburban native forest of subtropical Australia. Materials and methods Foliar and surface soil (0–10 cm) samples were collected from two understory species of acacia ( A. leiocalyx and A. dispa...

Microbial nitrogen (N) use efficiency (NUE) is crucial for retaining N in soils and supplying N to plants. However, how soil microbial NUE in N‐limited dryland responds to aridity remains poorly understood. Here we used 18 O and 15 N isotope labeling techniques to investigate the effects of climatic, edaphic, and biotic factors on microbial N metabolism along a 2200 km aridity gradient on the Tibetan Plateau. We found soil mic...

Quantifying the contribution of microbial necromass to soil organic carbon (SOC) has been a hot topic in the past decade, offering critical insights into soil carbon sequestration mechanisms. Amino sugars (AS) are widely used biomarkers for estimating microbial necromass in soils, with the ratios of AS to microbial necromass carbon (MNC) serving as conversion factors to derive MNC from AS measurement. Because AS decomposes mor...

Aim Conflicting distribution patterns of soil microbes along the elevation gradient in alpine ecosystems have been suggested based on observations from individual mountains. There remains a lack of biogeographical studies spanning multiple latitudes and climate zones, a scale appropriate to reveal general ecological patterns of soil microbial biomass (SMB) for alpine ecosystems. We conducted a large‐scale sampling campaign alo...

Soil food webs regulate microbial biomass and necromass production and are therefore critical for carbon sequestration. The mechanisms by which top predators regulate microbial necromass formation across multitrophic levels in the real‐world soil food web remain nearly unknown. This study investigates how top‐down forces—from omnivorous‐predaceous nematodes to microbivorous nematodes and microbes—affect the formation of microb...

Soil dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a critical reservoir of carbon and nutrients in forest ecosystems, playing a central role in carbon cycling and microbial community dynamics. However, the influence of DOM molecular‐level diversity (chemodiversity) on microbial community diversity and spatial distribution remains poorly understood. In this study, we used Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry and high...

Microbial carbon (C) use efficiency (CUE) describes the proportion of organic C used by microorganisms for anabolic processes, which increases with soil organic C (SOC) content on a global scale. However, it is unclear whether a similar relationship exists during natural vegetation restoration in terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we investigated the patterns of CUE along a 160‐year vegetation restoration chronosequence (from farml...