5. CONCLUSIONS

Altogether, our findings provide strong empirical evidence that deep soil multifunctionality, which has largely been ignored in desert ecosystems, differs from the multifunctionality of whole superficial soils and slightly decreases as soil depth increases throughout the entire profile, suggesting fundamental roles in regulating and buffering overall ecological service functions. Particular microbial phyla rather than total microbial diversity can best predict and explain the vertical profile variation in multifunctionality in desert ecosystems. By identifying and characterizing the quantitative relationships between soil microbiomes and multifunctionality in vertical soil profiles, our results advance knowledge of pivotal ecological factors such as microbial community-multifunctionality relationships and will assist microbial ecologists in predicting and explaining the slight variation in ecosystem service functions in desert ecosystems.