| 1. |
- Phillips, Helen R. P., et al.
(author)
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Global distribution of earthworm diversity
- 2019
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 366:6464, s. 480-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Soil organisms, including earthworms, are a key component of terrestrial ecosystems. However, little is known about their diversity, their distribution, and the threats affecting them. We compiled a global dataset of sampled earthworm communities from 6928 sites in 57 countries as a basis for predicting patterns in earthworm diversity, abundance, and biomass. We found that local species richness and abundance typically peaked at higher latitudes, displaying patterns opposite to those observed in aboveground organisms. However, high species dissimilarity across tropical locations may cause diversity across the entirety of the tropics to be higher than elsewhere. Climate variables were found to be more important in shaping earthworm communities than soil properties or habitat cover. These findings suggest that climate change may have serious implications for earthworm communities and for the functions they provide.
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| 2. |
- Ramirez, Kelly S., et al.
(author)
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Detecting macroecological patterns in bacterial communities across independent studies of global soils
- 2018
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In: Nature Microbiology. - : NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP. - 2058-5276. ; 3:2, s. 189-196
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The emergence of high-throughput DNA sequencing methods provides unprecedented opportunities to further unravel bacterial biodiversity and its worldwide role from human health to ecosystem functioning. However, despite the abundance of sequencing studies, combining data from multiple individual studies to address macroecological questions of bacterial diversity remains methodically challenging and plagued with biases. Here, using a machine-learning approach that accounts for differences among studies and complex interactions among taxa, we merge 30 independent bacterial data sets comprising 1,998 soil samples from 21 countries. Whereas previous meta-analysis efforts have focused on bacterial diversity measures or abundances of major taxa, we show that disparate amplicon sequence data can be combined at the taxonomy-based level to assess bacterial community structure. We find that rarer taxa are more important for structuring soil communities than abundant taxa, and that these rarer taxa are better predictors of community structure than environmental factors, which are often confounded across studies. We conclude that combining data from independent studies can be used to explore bacterial community dynamics, identify potential 'indicator' taxa with an important role in structuring communities, and propose hypotheses on the factors that shape bacterial biogeography that have been overlooked in the past.
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| 3. |
- Hol, W. H. Gera, et al.
(author)
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Context dependency and saturating effects of loss of rare soil microbes on plant productivity
- 2015
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In: Frontiers in Plant Science. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-462X. ; 6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Land use intensification is associated with loss of biodiversity and altered ecosystem functioning. Until now most studies on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning focused on random loss of species, while loss of rare species that usually are the first to disappear received less attention. Here we test if the effect of rare microbial species loss on plant productivity depends on the origin of the microbial soil community. Soils were sampled from three land use types at two farms. Microbial communities with increasing loss of rare species were created by inoculating sterilized soils with serially diluted soil suspensions. After 8 months of incubation, the effects of the different soil communities on abiotic soil properties, soil processes, microbial community composition, and plant productivity was measured. Dilution treatments resulted in increasing species loss, which was in relation to abundance of bacteria in the original field soil, without affecting most of the other soil parameters and processes. Microbial species loss affected plant biomass positively, negatively or not at all, depending on soil origin, but not on land use history. Even within fields the effects of dilution on plant biomass varied between replicates, suggesting heterogeneity in microbial community composition. The effects of medium and severe species loss on plant biomass were similar, pointing toward a saturating effect of species loss. We conclude that changes in the composition of the soil microbial community, including rare species loss, can affect plant productivity, depending on the composition of the initial microbial community. Future work on the relation between function and species loss effects should address this variation by including multiple sampling origins.
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| 4. |
- Tsiafouli, Maria A., et al.
(author)
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Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe
- 2015
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In: Global Change Biology. - West Sussex : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 21:2, s. 973-985
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Soil biodiversity plays a key role in regulating the processes that underpin the delivery of ecosystem goods and services in terrestrial ecosystems. Agricultural intensification is known to change the diversity of individual groups of soil biota, but less is known about how intensification affects biodiversity of the soil food web as a whole, and whether or not these effects may be generalized across regions. We examined biodiversity in soil food webs from grasslands, extensive, and intensive rotations in four agricultural regions across Europe: in Sweden, the UK, the Czech Republic and Greece. Effects of land-use intensity were quantified based on structure and diversity among functional groups in the soil food web, as well as on community-weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. We also elucidate land-use intensity effects on diversity of taxonomic units within taxonomic groups of soil fauna. We found that between regions soil food web diversity measures were variable, but that increasing land-use intensity caused highly consistent responses. In particular, land-use intensification reduced the complexity in the soil food webs, as well as the community-weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. In all regions across Europe, species richness of earthworms, Collembolans, and oribatid mites was negatively affected by increased land-use intensity. The taxonomic distinctness, which is a measure of taxonomic relatedness of species in a community that is independent of species richness, was also reduced by land-use intensification. We conclude that intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity, making soil food webs less diverse and composed of smaller bodied organisms. Land-use intensification results in fewer functional groups of soil biota with fewer and taxonomically more closely related species. We discuss how these changes in soil biodiversity due to land-use intensification may threaten the functioning of soil in agricultural production systems.
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| 5. |
- Hines, Jes, et al.
(author)
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Towards an integration of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning and food web theory to evaluate relationships between multiple ecosystem services
- 2015
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In: Advances in Ecological Research. - : Elsevier. - 0065-2504. ; 53, s. 161-199
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Ecosystem responses to changes in species diversity are often studied individually. However, changes in species diversity can simultaneously influence multiple interdependent ecosystem functions. Therefore, an important challenge is to determine when and how changes in species diversity that influence one function will also drive changes in other functions. By providing the underlying structure of species interactions, ecological networks can quantify connections between biodiversity and multiple ecosystem functions. Here, we review parallels in the conceptual development of biodiversity- ecosystem functioning (BEF) and food web theory (FWT) research. Subsequently, we evaluate three common principles that unite these two research areas by explaining the patterns, concentrations, and direction of the flux of nutrients and energy through the species in diverse interaction webs. We give examples of combined BEF-FWT approaches that can be used to identify vulnerable species and habitats and to evaluate links that drive trade-offs between multiple ecosystems functions. These combined approaches reflect promising trends towards better management of biodiversity in landscapes that provide essential ecosystem services supporting human well-being.
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