Microbial diversity and ecological networks as indicators of environmental quality

Evaluating the quality of ecosystems in terms of biological patrimony and functioning is of critical importance in the actual context of intensified human activities. Microbial diversity is commonly used as a bioindicator of ecosystems functioning. However, there is a lack of sensitivity of microbia...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental chemistry letters 2017-06, Vol.15 (2), p.265-281
Main Authors: Karimi, Battle, Maron, Pierre Alain, Chemidlin-Prevost Boure, Nicolas, Bernard, Nadine, Gilbert, Daniel, Ranjard, Lionel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural practices
Agricultural wastes
Air pollution
Analytical Chemistry
Atmospheric pollution deposition
Biodiversity
Bioindicators
Biomonitoring
Change detection
Climate
Climate change
Earth and Environmental Science
Ecology
Ecology, environment
Ecosystems
Ecotoxicology
Environment
Environmental Chemistry
Environmental degradation
Environmental quality
Geochemistry
Indicator organisms
Indicator species
Indicators
Interactions
Life Sciences
Microbial activity
Microorganisms
Networks
Pollutant deposition
Pollutants
Pollution
Quality
Review
Soil
Soil contamination
Soil water
Wastewater
Water pollution
Water quality
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Summary:Evaluating the quality of ecosystems in terms of biological patrimony and functioning is of critical importance in the actual context of intensified human activities. Microbial diversity is commonly used as a bioindicator of ecosystems functioning. However, there is a lack of sensitivity of microbial diversity indicators in the case of moderate and chronic environmental degradation, such as atmospheric deposition of pollutants, agricultural practices, diffuse pollution by wastewater and climate change. As a consequence, there is a need for alternative bioindicators of soils and water quality. Here, we discuss the interest of adopting a more integrative approach based on biotic interaction networks beyond the simple diversity indicators. We review how the various biotic interactions can be integrated in the various microbial networks such as trophic, mutualistic and co-occurrence networks. Then we discuss the efficiency of microbial networks and associated metrics to detect changes in microbial communities. We conclude that the connectance, the number of links and the average degree of co-occurrence networks could vary from 10 to 50% in response to minor perturbations when microbial diversity parameters remain stable. Finally, we analyze studies that aimed at linking microbial networks and activity to evaluate the potential of such networks for providing simple and operational indicators of ecosystem quality and functioning.
ISSN:1610-3653
1610-3661
DOI:10.1007/s10311-017-0614-6