Biodiversity regulates ecosystem predictability

McGrady-Steed, Jill; Harris, Patricia M.; Morin, Peter J.

doi:10.1038/36561

Cited by 622 publications

(563 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The dilution of a community with taxa of different abundance results in the removal of rare organisms first (Franklin et al, 2001). Therefore, in contrast to studies where richness gradients were created by artificial assembly (for example, Bell et al, 2005;Jiang, 2007;McGrady-Steed et al, 1997;Naeem and Li, 1997), the dilution approach represents a nonstochastic procedure (Franklin et al, 2001). In natural communities, species and populations respond differently to environmental fluctuations and numerically rare species are more prone to Function-specific response to reduced diversity H Peter et al extinction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Function-specific response to depletion of microbial diversity

et al. 2010

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Recent meta-analyses suggest that ecosystem functioning increases with biodiversity, but contradictory results have been presented for some microbial functions. Moreover, observations of only one function underestimate the functional role of diversity because of species-specific trade-offs in the ability to carry out different functions. We examined multiple functions in batch cultures of natural freshwater bacterial communities with different richness, achieved by a dilutionto-extinction approach. Community composition was assessed by molecular fingerprinting of 16S rRNA and chitinase genes, representing the total community and a trait characteristic for a functional group, respectively. Richness was positively related to abundance and biomass, negatively correlated to cell volumes and unrelated to maximum intrinsic growth rate. The response of chitin and cellulose degradation rates depended on the presence of a single phylotype. We suggest that species identity and community composition rather than richness matters for specific microbial processes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Function-specific response to depletion of microbial diversity

et al. 2010

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“…1). Additional work has shown that greater diversity can lead to greater ecosystem predictability and temporal stability (7)(8)(9). Such results have reopened long-dormant questions concerning why and how diversity might affect population, community, and ecosystem processes.…”

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confidence: 94%

An evolutionary approach to ecosystem functioning

Tilman

2001

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Although the direct effects of changes in plant community composition and/or diversity on ecosystem processes have been evaluated in a number of studies [24,31,32,[49][50][51], little is known about how microbes, key mediators of ecosystem processes, respond to changes in plant diversity or composition. This is because traditional descriptions of microbial communities have depended on techniques that required growth of microorganisms in the laboratory, which are now known to capture a scant proportion of the microbial species that persist in nature [27,52,53].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Tropical Plant Diversity and Composition on Soil Microbial Communities

2006

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There is growing interest in understanding the linkages between above-and belowground communities, and very little is known about these linkages in tropical systems. Using an experimental site at La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica, we examined whether plant diversity, plant community composition, and season influenced microbial communities. We also determined whether soil characteristics were related to differences in microbial communities. Phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) composition revealed that microbial community composition differed across a plant diversity gradient (plots contained 1, 3, 5, or over 25 species). Plant species identity also was a factor influencing microbial community composition; PLFA composition significantly varied among monocultures, and among three-species combinations that differed in plant species composition. Differences among treatments within each of these comparisons were apparent in all four sampling dates of the study. There was no consistent shift in microbial community composition between wet and dry seasons, although we did see significant changes over time. Of all measured soil characteristics, soil C/N was most often associated with changes in microbial community composition across treatment groups. Our findings provide evidence for human alteration of soil microbial communities via the alteration of plant community composition and diversity and that such changes are mediated in part by changes in soil carbon quality.

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Biodiversity regulates ecosystem predictability

Cited by 622 publications

References 16 publications

Function-specific response to depletion of microbial diversity

Function-specific response to depletion of microbial diversity

An evolutionary approach to ecosystem functioning

The Influence of Tropical Plant Diversity and Composition on Soil Microbial Communities

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