Fire and Rhizosphere Effects on Bacterial Co-Occurrence Patterns.

Fires are common in Mediterranean soils and constitute an important driver of their evolution. Although fire effects on vegetation dynamics are widely studied, their influence on the assembly rules of soil prokaryotes in a small-scale environment has attracted limited attention. In the present study, we reanalyzed the data from Aponte et al.

The effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and essential oil on soil microbial community and N-related enzymes during the fungal early colonization phase.

The arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and the essential oils are both agents of sustainable agriculture, and their independent effects on the community of free-living soil microbes have been explored. In a tomato pot experiment, conducted in a sandy loam mixture, we examined the independent and joint effects of inoculation with the fungus and the addition of essential oil on the structure of the soil microbial community and the activity of soil enzymes involved in the N-cycle, during the pre-symbiosis phase. Plants were grown for 60 days and were inoculated with Then pots were treated with essential oil (OIL) weekly for a period of a month.

Quantifying nature: ideological representations in the concept of diversity.

The conflicts around the scientific status of the concept of diversity are considered here as symptoms of hidden, socially originated, ideological representations inherent in the theoretical context of western ecology. Species diversity was coined in the 1940s, as a constant in the statistical models that described the distribution of individuals into different species and, therefore, as the expression of all the parameters that determine ecologically this distribution. The assumption of such a regular distribution is attributed to the influence of organicism and the correlated presuppositions of harmony and homeostasis.

The concept of life and its significance in the construction of the new ecosystem ecology of Bernard Patten, Sven Jørgensen and Milan Straskraba.

In a series of articles, three system ecologists, B. Patten, S. Jørgensen and M.