"Microbial biodiversity depends on both the size of the area sampled and the time span of the observation. Reliable comparison of biodiversity across ecosystems must consider both area and time. This presents challenges for determining appropriate time scale for biodiversity assessment and conservation in ecosystem management," said Jizhong Zhou, director, OU Institute for Environmental Genomics; professor, OU College of Arts and Sciences; and adjunct senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Zhou and OU researchers collaborated with researchers from Central South University, Tsinghua University, China and Michigan State University. The study is the first demonstration illustrating that soil microbes exhibit microbial phylogenetic diversity increases with time and document that warming plays predominant roles in regulating temporal scaling.