Divergent responses of β‐diversity among organism groups to a strong environmental gradient

Abstract

. 2016. Divergent responses of β-diversity among organism groups to a strong environmental gradient.Ecosphere 7(10):e01535. 10. 1002/ecs2.1535 Abstract. A limited understanding of how variation in the species composition among communities (i.e., β-diversity) changes along natural environmental gradients, and the mechanisms responsible, inhibits our ability to understand large-scale biodiversity change resulting from either natural or anthropogenic drivers. Therefore, our aim was to test key drivers of β-diversity patterns along a strong, natural environmental gradient for seven widely different organisms groups, that is, root-associated fungi, litter fungi, soil nematodes, vascular plants, epiphytic lichens, beetles, and spiders. Using previously published community-level data from boreal-forested islands, we calculated α-diversity and β-diversity for each of the seven organism groups. Out of several available environmental variables, we identified four variables, that is, ecosystem age, total C storage, net primary productivity (NPP), and N-to-P ratio, as potential predictors of variation in β-diversity. We found that ecosystem age was the variable with the highest overall importance. We then used two different methods to quantify the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes underlying patterns in β-diversity along the ecosystem age gradient, and our detailed knowledge based on prior data collection in the study system to mechanistically explain amonggroup differences in these patterns. We found divergent responses in β-diversity along the age gradient for the seven different organism groups, due to among-group differences in the relative importance of deterministic vs. stochastic community assembly, and attributed these results to reliance on resources from different energy channels that are not always related to NPP. Our results highlight the necessity to consider the importance of taxon-specific resources, and not only NPP, to obtain an understanding of β-diversity patterns among organism groups and ecosystems, as well as large-scale patterns in biodiversity. They therefore also suggest that management and protection of β-biodiversity in the landscape requires explicit consideration of a wide range of habitats.

Divergent assemblage patterns and driving forces for bacterial and fungal communities along a glacier forefield chronosequence

“…However, most previous studies have focused on only a single group of organisms or a single trophic level (but see e.g., Soininen et al, 2007;Norfolk et al, 2015). Recently, Jonsson et al (2016) investigated seven different groups or organisms and discovered a more deterministic pattern for beetle community changes, but a more stochastic pattern for litter fungal community changes along with the age of the ecosystem. It is reasonable to speculate that deterministic and stochastic processes can play different roles in contrasting organisms during different (early vs. late) successional stages (Powell et al, 2015;Jonsson et al, 2016).…”

Sequence clustering threshold has little effect on the recovery of microbial community structure

“…The development of high‐throughput DNA sequencing technologies, which enable cost effective mass sequencing of targeted, amplified DNA regions, allows profiling of microbial communities in environmental samples at an unprecedented depth and has, accordingly, led to a resurgence in microbial ecology studies (Hibbett, Ohman, & Kirk, ; Margulies et al., ; Sogin et al., ). The proliferation of studies in this field in recent years has enhanced our understanding of the structure and function of microbial communities, for example how their taxonomic composition varies along ecological gradients (e.g., Jonsson et al., ; Pellissier et al., ; Yao, Vik, Brysting, Carlsen, & Halvorsen, ), among forest types (e.g., Davey, Kauserud, & Ohlson, ), among soils with different availability of nutrients and substrate types (e.g., Davey et al., ) and among different host species (e.g., Botnen et al., ; Morris, Pérez‐Pérez, Smith, Bledsoe, & Perez‐Perez, ; Nissinen, Männistö, & van Elsas, ). For a majority of ecosystems, however, we still lack knowledge about the structure and basic properties of microbial communities, such as the relative importance of biotic factors vs. environment as determinants of the species composition.…”

Efecto de la deposición de N y P atmosférico en la microfauna edáfica de sistemas de alta montaña de la red de Parques Nacionales

“…El estudio de la diversidad beta mostró claras diferencias en la composición de las comunidades de nematodos entre los PPNN debidas al reemplazamiento de especies, es decir, a las diferencias en la composición de las comunidades en los diferentes sitios de muestreo (Baselga 2010). Estudios previos han mostrado que la diversidad beta de las comunidades de microfauna edáfica responden a variables como la edad del ecosistema, el C del suelo, la productividad primaria neta y el ratio N:P (Jonsson et al 2016). En nuestro estudio, parece haber una relación entre la diversidad beta y el gradiente de aridez, de forma que las comunidades son más distintas cuanto más distinto es el régimen climático, en consonancia con estudios previos (Li et al 2020).…”