Campbell, Colin
- Department of Soil and Environment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
The continuum hypothesis states that both deterministic and stochastic processes contribute to the assembly of ecological communities. However, the contextual dependency of these processes remains an open question that imposes strong limitations on predictions of community responses to environmental change. Here we measure community and habitat turnover across multiple vertical soil horizons at 183 sites across Scotland for bacteria and fungi, both dominant and functionally vital components of all soils but which differ substantially in their growth habit and dispersal capability. We find that habitat turnover is the primary driver of bacterial community turnover in general, although its importance decreases with increasing isolation and disturbance. Fungal communities, however, exhibit a highly stochastic assembly process, both neutral and non-neutral in nature, largely independent of disturbance. These findings suggest that increased focus on dispersal limitation and biotic interactions are necessary to manage and conserve the key ecosystem services provided by these assemblages.
Published in
Nature Communications
2015, volume: 6, article number: 8444
Publisher: NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
SLU Authors
Global goals (SDG)
UKÄ Subject classification
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (Methods development to be 10203)
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9444
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/75489