Authors: Prashant Kumar Sinha, Shalini Gupta
Abstract: Microbial communities are critical yet often overlooked components of ecosystems, acting as sensitive indicators and drivers of environmental change. As climate change intensifies, shifts in temperature, precipitation, and salinity regimes influence microbial diversity, composition, and function across diverse ecosystems, including soil, freshwater, and marine environments. These microbial responses often precede visible ecological transformations, making them powerful early-warning indicators of ecosystem shifts. This study explores how microbial signatures—defined as changes in taxonomic composition, functional gene expression, and metabolic profiles—respond to climate-driven perturbations. By synthesizing recent meta-analyses and case studies from tundra, mangroves, coral reefs, and desert biomes, we demonstrate that microbial indicators reflect stress gradients and adaptation thresholds, often aligning with changes in plant productivity, carbon cycling, and trophic interactions. Our analysis also emphasizes the need for high-resolution temporal monitoring and multi-omic approaches to decode microbial responses to changing climates. The results suggest that integrating microbial data into climate impact models could enhance prediction accuracy for ecosystem resilience and tipping points. This article calls for repositioning microbial research from a peripheral to a central role in climate change ecology. Understanding microbial signatures in relation to environmental stressors is essential to detect, forecast, and potentially mitigate large-scale ecosystem transformations.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16869392
