Response of microbial communities to long-term fertilization depends on their microhabitat

The objective of this study was to characterize the microbial communities attached to clay (< 2 lm), fine silt (2–20 lm), coarse silt (20–63 lm) and sand-sized fractions [>63 lm; including particulate organic matter (POM)] of an arable soil and analyse their response to more than 100 years of two different fertilization regimes. Mild ultrasonic dispersal, wet-sieving and centrifugation allowed the separation of soil particles with the majority of bacterial cells and DNA still attached. Fertilizations increased soil organic carbon (SOC), total DNA and the abundance of bacterial, archaeal and fungal rRNA genes more strongly in the larger-sized fractions than in fine silt, and no effect was seen with clay, the latter representing above 70% of the total microbial populations. A highly positive correlation was found between microbial rRNA genes and the surface area provided by the particles, while the correlation with SOC was lower, indicating a particle-size-specific heterogeneous effect of SOC. The prokaryotic diversity responded more strongly to fertilization in the larger particles but not with clay. Overall, these results demonstrate that microbial responsiveness to long-term fertilization declined with smaller particle sizes and that especially clay fractions exhibit a high buffering capacity protecting microbial cells against changes even after 100 years under different agricultural management.