WE Web Ecology WE Web Ecol. 1399-1183 Oikos Editorial Office Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/we-9-68-2009 Manipulation of soil biota in ecological research He W.-M. 1 Cui Q.-G. 1 State Key Lab of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Inst. of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100093 Beijing, China 09 12 2009 9 1 68 71 Copyright: © 2009 W.-M. He 2009 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://we.copernicus.org/articles/9/68/2009/we-9-68-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://we.copernicus.org/articles/9/68/2009/we-9-68-2009.pdf

Manipulation of soil biota, such as soil sterilization, may have complex effects as they alter soil properties as well as microorganism communities. To assess the effects of such manipulation, we conducted an experiment using three sterilizing approaches, two soil types, and two plant species to identify the problems that may occur when different sterilizing approaches are used. The sterilizing treatments decreased growth of plants and resulted in large changes in soil nutrients and pH. Such effects varied with the approach followed. Our data suggest that studied effects on soil biota may be misleading if we fail to consider such changes in the soil.