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Strength of species interactions determines biodiversity and stability in microbial communities

Open access
Ratzke, Christoph, Barrere, Julien, Gore, Jeff·2020·Nature Ecology & Evolution

Abstract

Organisms—especially microbes—tend to live together in ecosystems. While some of these ecosystems are very biodiverse, others are not, and while some are very stable over time, others undergo strong temporal fluctuations. Despite a long history of research and a plethora of data, it is not fully understood what determines the biodiversity and stability of ecosystems. Theory and experiments suggest a connection between species interaction, biodiversity and the stability of ecosystems, where an increase in ecosystem stability with biodiversity could be observed in several cases. However, what causes these connections remains unclear. Here, we show in microbial ecosystems in the laboratory that the concentrations of available nutrients can set the strength of interactions between bacteria. High nutrient concentrations allowed the bacteria to strongly alter the chemical environment, causing on average more negative interactions between species. These stronger interactions excluded more species from the community, resulting in a loss of biodiversity. At the same time, the stronger interactions also decreased the stability of the microbial communities, providing a mechanistic link between species interaction, biodiversity and stability in microbial ecosystems. Analysing communities of soil bacteria under differing nutrient concentrations, the authors show that extensive growth with high levels of nutrients results in stronger interactions among species, leading to declines in biodiversity and stability.

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Metadata

Authors
Ratzke, C., Barrere, J., & Gore, J.
Venue
Nature Ecology & Evolution
Published
2020-02-10
Volume
4
Issue
3
Pages
376-383
ISSN
2397-334X (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3004670562
Cited by
642
References
12
FWCI
38.62
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Strength of species interactions determines biodiversity and stability in microbial communities. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41559-020-1099-4
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Ratzke, C., Barrere, J., & Gore, J. (2020). Strength of species interactions determines biodiversity and stability in microbial communities. Nature Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1099-4

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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