Fox, AaronBarreiro Buján, AnaWall, DavidBondi, Giulia2025-11-102025-11-102025-08-09Fox, A., Barreiro, A., Wall, Bondi, G. (2025). Identifying biomarkers for shifts in microbial community structure in Irish Grasslands: the influence of context-specific drivers. "Journal of Soils and Sediments", 25 (2025), p. 2709–2723. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-025-04095-71439-0108https://hdl.handle.net/10347/43643PURPOSE: This study investigated the comparative influence of regional/climatic difference in agronomic potential (‘Region'), natural drainage (‘Drainage’) and grassland management intensity (‘Manage’) on soil physicochemical variables, microbial community structure and soil potential extracellular enzymatic activity across 37 Irish grassland sites. METHODS: Soil samples were collected in a structured manner from representative sites, and soil physicochemical parameters were measured. Soil microbial community structure was determined by phospholipid fatty acid analysis and different potential soil extracellular enzymatic activities were measured through both fluorometric and colorimetric assays. Doubly-nested PERMANOVA and ANOVA models were performed in R to evaluate the impact of the examined factors on multivariate and univariate variables, respectively. RESULTS: A doubly-nested PERMANOVA model revealed that each of the three factors exerted a significant influence on soil microbial community structure (p < 0.05). The factor ‘Drainage’ did have a stronger influence on the abundance of the fatty acid biomarker for the arbuscular mycorrizal fungi (effect size = 20.54%) than ‘Region’ had (effect size = 10.05%), with ‘Manage’ having no significant effect. In contrast to soil microbial community structure, individual soil potential extracellular enzymatic activities mostly either did not significantly respond to any factor, or significantly responded to ‘Region’ only (p < 0.05, i.e., β-N-acetyl-glucosaminidase, arylsulfatase and acid phosphatase). CONCLUSION: The study highlights the value of considering localized environmental drivers in studies relating to soil parameters at the national level, to support effective, context-specific management strategies for soil biodiversity conservation and national monitoring schemes of soil biology.eng© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Phospholipid fatty acidsEnzymatic activityGrassland management intensityDrainageArbuscular mycorrhizal fungi3101 Agroquímica3108 Fitopatologíajournal article10.1007/s11368-025-04095-71614-7480open access