Molecular Characterization of Fungal Biodiversity in Long-Term Polychlorinated Biphenyl-Contaminated Soils.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) belong to the organic pollutants that are toxic to humans and harmful to environments. Numerous studies dealing with the impact of PCBs on soil microorganisms have focused on bacterial communities. The effects of PCBs on fungal communities in three different PCB-polluted soils from former industrial sites were investigated using high-throughput sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer 1 region.

Assessing the dynamic changes of rhizosphere functionality of Zea mays plants grown in organochlorine contaminated soils.

The persistent organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in soils are suspected to disturb soil biogeochemical cycles. This study addressed the dynamic changes in soil functionality under lindane and chlordecone exposures with or without maize plant. Decreases in soil ammonium concentration, potential nitrogen mineralization and microbial biomass were only OCP-influenced in bulk soils.

Relative contribution of soil, management and traits to co-variations of multiple ecosystem properties in grasslands.

Ecological intensification promotes the better use of ecosystem functioning for agricultural production and as a provider of additional regulation and cultural services. We investigated the mechanisms underpinning potential ecological intensification of livestock production in the Vercors mountains (France). We quantified the variations in seven ecosystem properties associated with key ecosystem services: above-ground biomass production at first harvest, fodder digestibility, plant species richness, soil organic matter content, soil carbon content, total microbial biomass and soil bacteria:fungi ratio across 39 grassland plots representing varying management types and intensity.

Unravelling the architecture of functional variability in wild populations of L.

Functional variability (FV) of populations can be decomposed into three main features: the individual variability of multiple traits, the strength of correlations between those traits and the main direction of these correlations, the latter two being known as 'phenotypic integration'. Evolutionary biology has long recognized that FV in natural populations is key to determining potential evolutionary responses, but this topic has been little studied in functional ecology.Here we focus on the arctico-alpine perennial plant species L.