Maintenance of soil functioning following erosion of microbial diversity

Summary The paradigm that soil microbial communities, being very diverse, have high functional redundancy levels, so that erosion of microbial diversity is less important for ecosystem functioning than erosion of plant or animal diversity, is often taken for granted. However, this has only been demo...

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Published in:Environmental microbiology 2006-12, Vol.8 (12), p.2162-2169
Main Authors: Wertz, Sophie, Degrange, Valérie, Prosser, James I., Poly, Franck, Commeaux, Claire, Freitag, Thomas, Guillaumaud, Nadine, Roux, Xavier Le
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bacteria - genetics
Bacteria - growth & development
Biodegradation, Environmental
Biodiversity
DNA Fingerprinting
Ecology, environment
Ecosystem
Extinction, Biological
Life Sciences
Microbiology and Parasitology
Models, Biological
Nitrogen Fixation - genetics
Soil
Soil Microbiology
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Summary:Summary The paradigm that soil microbial communities, being very diverse, have high functional redundancy levels, so that erosion of microbial diversity is less important for ecosystem functioning than erosion of plant or animal diversity, is often taken for granted. However, this has only been demonstrated for decomposition/respiration functions, performed by a large proportion of the total microbial community, but not for specialized microbial groups. Here, we determined the impact of a decrease in soil microbial diversity on soil ecosystem processes using a removal approach, in which less abundant species were removed preferentially. This was achieved by inoculation of sterile soil microcosms with serial dilutions of a suspension obtained from the same non‐sterile soil and subsequent incubation, to enable recovery of community size. The sensitivity to diversity erosion was evaluated for three microbial functional groups with known contrasting taxonomic diversities (ammonia oxidizers 
ISSN:1462-2912
1462-2920
DOI:10.1111/j.1462-2920.2006.01098.x