Soil viral response to drought disturbance and ecosystem recovery in an artificial rainforest
- 1University of Arizona
Abstract
Anthropogenic climate change is driving increased temperature and altered precipitation patterns in tropical rainforests, yet the impact of severe drought on soil viral communities and their recovery capacity remains poorly understood. Soil viruses can exert strong controls on bacterial populations impacting microbially-mediated soil processes such as carbon cycling. At the same time, viruses are very sensitive to changes in the soil environment. We leverage meta-omics data from soils collected during a two-month drought and one-month recovery experiment carried in the Biosphere 2 Tropical Rainforest artificial biome. Our results indicate that soil viral community structure responds to small scale soil habitat heterogeneity more strongly than on overall changes in moisture. Additionally, the abundance of soil viruses was associated with a higher diversity of metabolites in the soil, suggesting viruses play a key role in soil biogeochemical processes. Altogether, our study suggests that soil viruses are an active part of tropical rainforest soil microbial communities and that is necessary to understand their response to drought.
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BibTeX
@misc{toucedasuarez2026soil,
title = {{Soil viral response to drought disturbance and ecosystem recovery in an artificial rainforest}},
author = {M. Touceda-Suarez and A. J. Ponsero and L. K. Hernandez and J. Gil-Loaiza and J. Fudyma and M. Clark and C. Werner and S. N. Ladd and M. M. Tfaily and A. Barberan and L. K. Meredith},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.28.755132},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.28.755132v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Soil viral response to drought disturbance and ecosystem recovery in an artificial rainforest
AU - M. Touceda-Suarez
AU - A. J. Ponsero
AU - L. K. Hernandez
AU - J. Gil-Loaiza
AU - J. Fudyma
AU - M. Clark
AU - C. Werner
AU - S. N. Ladd
AU - M. M. Tfaily
AU - A. Barberan
AU - L. K. Meredith
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.28.755132
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.28.755132v1
AB - Anthropogenic climate change is driving increased temperature and altered precipitation patterns in tropical rainforests, yet the impact of severe drought on soil viral communities and their recovery capacity remains poorly understood. Soil viruses can exert strong controls on bacterial populations impacting microbially-mediated soil processes such as carbon cycling. At the same time, viruses are very sensitive to changes in the soil environment. We leverage meta-omics data from soils collected during a two-month drought and one-month recovery experiment carried in the Biosphere 2 Tropical Rainforest artificial biome. Our results indicate that soil viral community structure responds to small scale soil habitat heterogeneity more strongly than on overall changes in moisture. Additionally, the abundance of soil viruses was associated with a higher diversity of metabolites in the soil, suggesting viruses play a key role in soil biogeochemical processes. Altogether, our study suggests that soil viruses are an active part of tropical rainforest soil microbial communities and that is necessary to understand their response to drought.
ER -