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Patterns in Species Persistence and Biomass Production in Soil Microcosms Recovering from a Disturbance Reject a Neutral Hypothesis for Bacterial Community Assembly

The neutral theory of biodiversity has emerged as a major null hypothesis in community ecology. The neutral theory may sufficiently well explain the structuring of microbial communities as the extremely high microbial diversity has led to an expectation of high ecological equivalence among species....

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Zhang, Fen-Guo, Zhang, Quan-Guo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4427283/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25961300
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126962
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author Zhang, Fen-Guo
Zhang, Quan-Guo
author_facet Zhang, Fen-Guo
Zhang, Quan-Guo
author_sort Zhang, Fen-Guo
collection PubMed
description The neutral theory of biodiversity has emerged as a major null hypothesis in community ecology. The neutral theory may sufficiently well explain the structuring of microbial communities as the extremely high microbial diversity has led to an expectation of high ecological equivalence among species. To address this possibility, we worked with microcosms of two soils; the microcosms were either exposed, or not, to a dilution disturbance which reduces community sizes and removes some very rare species. After incubation for recovery, changes in bacterial species composition in microcosms compared with the source soils were assessed by pyrosequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes. Our assays could detect species with a proportional abundance ≥ 0.0001 in each community, and changes in the abundances of these species should have occurred during the recovery growth, but not be caused by the disturbance per se. The undisturbed microcosms showed slight changes in bacterial species diversity and composition, with a small number of initially low-abundance species going extinct. In microcosms recovering from the disturbance, however, species diversity decreased dramatically (by > 50%); and in most cases there was not a positive relationship between species initial abundance and their chance of persistence. Furthermore, a positive relationship between species richness and community biomass was observed in microcosms of one soil, but not in those of the other soil. The results are not consistent with a neutral hypothesis that predicts a positive abundance-persistence relationship and a null effect of diversity on ecosystem functioning. Adaptation mechanisms, in particular those associated with species interactions including facilitation and predation, may provide better explanations.
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spelling pubmed-44272832015-05-21 Patterns in Species Persistence and Biomass Production in Soil Microcosms Recovering from a Disturbance Reject a Neutral Hypothesis for Bacterial Community Assembly Zhang, Fen-Guo Zhang, Quan-Guo PLoS One Research Article The neutral theory of biodiversity has emerged as a major null hypothesis in community ecology. The neutral theory may sufficiently well explain the structuring of microbial communities as the extremely high microbial diversity has led to an expectation of high ecological equivalence among species. To address this possibility, we worked with microcosms of two soils; the microcosms were either exposed, or not, to a dilution disturbance which reduces community sizes and removes some very rare species. After incubation for recovery, changes in bacterial species composition in microcosms compared with the source soils were assessed by pyrosequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes. Our assays could detect species with a proportional abundance ≥ 0.0001 in each community, and changes in the abundances of these species should have occurred during the recovery growth, but not be caused by the disturbance per se. The undisturbed microcosms showed slight changes in bacterial species diversity and composition, with a small number of initially low-abundance species going extinct. In microcosms recovering from the disturbance, however, species diversity decreased dramatically (by > 50%); and in most cases there was not a positive relationship between species initial abundance and their chance of persistence. Furthermore, a positive relationship between species richness and community biomass was observed in microcosms of one soil, but not in those of the other soil. The results are not consistent with a neutral hypothesis that predicts a positive abundance-persistence relationship and a null effect of diversity on ecosystem functioning. Adaptation mechanisms, in particular those associated with species interactions including facilitation and predation, may provide better explanations. Public Library of Science 2015-05-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4427283/ /pubmed/25961300 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126962 Text en © 2015 Zhang, Zhang http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zhang, Fen-Guo
Zhang, Quan-Guo
Patterns in Species Persistence and Biomass Production in Soil Microcosms Recovering from a Disturbance Reject a Neutral Hypothesis for Bacterial Community Assembly
title Patterns in Species Persistence and Biomass Production in Soil Microcosms Recovering from a Disturbance Reject a Neutral Hypothesis for Bacterial Community Assembly
title_full Patterns in Species Persistence and Biomass Production in Soil Microcosms Recovering from a Disturbance Reject a Neutral Hypothesis for Bacterial Community Assembly
title_fullStr Patterns in Species Persistence and Biomass Production in Soil Microcosms Recovering from a Disturbance Reject a Neutral Hypothesis for Bacterial Community Assembly
title_full_unstemmed Patterns in Species Persistence and Biomass Production in Soil Microcosms Recovering from a Disturbance Reject a Neutral Hypothesis for Bacterial Community Assembly
title_short Patterns in Species Persistence and Biomass Production in Soil Microcosms Recovering from a Disturbance Reject a Neutral Hypothesis for Bacterial Community Assembly
title_sort patterns in species persistence and biomass production in soil microcosms recovering from a disturbance reject a neutral hypothesis for bacterial community assembly
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4427283/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25961300
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126962
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