Total b-glucosidase, phosphatase, sulphatase, and peroxidase activities were correlated with community composition
(Table 5). Other researchers have shown that variation in the PLFA pattern was related to changes in respiration
(Bossio et al., 1998), which may be linked to total lignocellulase activity. However, the correlation between total enzyme activity and community composition may be due to concurrent changes in the microbial biomass or labile C. therefore, we found it valuable to normalize enzyme activities to microbial biomass. We used the specific activity of the enzymes as a measure of physiological capacity, assuming that the enzymes assayed were representative of the activities of the currently or recently viable microbial community.