A decade of research in mofette areas has given us new insights into adaptation of soil microorganisms to abiotic stress

Abstract

Natural CO₂ springs (mofettes) represent extreme ecosystems with severe exhalations of ambient temperature geological CO₂, inducing long-term soil hypoxia. In this paper an overview of mofette research in the fields of microbial ecology and biodiversity in presented, with a focus on the studies describing the impact of the changed soil gas regime on communities of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, archaea and bacteria. Along with the fast development of new, high-throughput molecular techniques driving the field of molecular ecology, mofettes enable new insights into the importance of the abiotic environmental factors in regulating soil biodiversity, and the community structure of these functionally important microbial groups.