Are there factors that might influence biomass but not activity or vice-versa?
I have some soils that had high biomass after an incubation but had the lowest microbial activity in terms of respiration and carbon source consumption (aminoacids, carb. acids and carbohydrates).
Same, soils with low biomass turned out to have the most active communities.
I expected higher biomass to be correlated with activity but it seems that is not correct? I have tried to find some info but most of what I found is correlation between these two.
Thank you!!
Yes, I guess so because microbial mass itself is calculated using the microbial activity such as substrate induced method. Then microbial biomass can be determined by the Substrate-Induced Respiration method (Anderson and Domsch 1978)whereby the increase in respiration rate over 24 hours after addition of substrate (0.22 g glucose /pot) was used to calculate the amount of microbial biomass C in soil (mg C/100 g DM soil).
For details of this can be found in the following paper:
Article Soil organic carbon and microbial biomass carbon under organ...
Best regards
When the resource is limited, increase and decrease in biomass, of course, affects the microbial- activity.
I don't think so. A higher bacterial biomass could be widely found when the bacteria have appropriate conditions for their growth (i.e., optimal pH, temperature, carbon source, etc). In these cases, they do not need to activate gene activities to deal with any stress, so we may not observe elevated gene expression levels.
do not forget that microbes also have life cycle, they live and die, if everything, as above, is fine reproduction should be the key,
- Badges
- Science topic