The DOI matches its Crossref record; 7 of the 7 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Testing the functional significance of microbial community composition
Abstract
A critical assumption underlying terrestrial ecosystem models is that soil microbial communities, when placed in a common environment, will function in an identical manner regardless of the composition of that community. Given high species diversity in microbial communities and the ability of microbes to adapt rapidly to new conditions, this assumption of functional redundancy seems plausible. We test the assumption by comparing litter decomposition rates in experimental microcosms inoculated with distinct microbial communities. We find that rates of carbon dioxide production from litter decomposition were dependent upon the microbial inoculum, with differences in the microbial community alone accounting for substantial (∼20%) variation in total carbon mineralized. Communities that shared a common history with a given foliar litter exhibited higher decomposition rates when compared to communities foreign to that habitat. Our results suggest that the implicit assumption in ecosystem models (i.e., microbial communities in the same environment are functionally equivalent) is incorrect. To predict accurately how biogeochemical processes will respond to global change may require consideration of the community composition and/or adaptation of microbial communities to past resource environments.
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Cites
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Cited by
The importance of anabolism in microbial control over soil carbon storage
Liang, C., Schimel, J. P., & Jastrow, J. D. (2017) · Nature Microbiology · doi:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2017.105 · Cited by 3,320
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The origin of litter chemical complexity during decomposition
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Decomposition responses to climate depend on microbial community composition
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Resilience vs. historical contingency in microbial responses to environmental change
Hawkes, C. V., & Keitt, T. H. (2015) · Ecology Letters · doi:10.1111/ele.12451 · Cited by 289
Metadata
- Authors
- Strickland, M. S., Lauber, C., Fierer, N., & Bradford, M. A.
- Venue
- Ecology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2009-02
- Volume
- 90
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 441-451
- ISSN
- 0012-9658 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-9170
- OpenAlex
- W2159974882
- Cited by
- 765
- References
- 7
- FWCI
- 59.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
