Human impacts, including global change, may alter the composition of soil faunal communities, but consequences for ecosystem functioning are poorly understood. We constructed model grassland systems in the Ecotron controlled environment facility and manipulated soil community composition through assemblages of different animal body sizes. Plant community composition, microbial and root biomass, decomposition rate, and mycorrhizal colonization were all markedly affected. However, two key ecosystem processes, aboveground net primary productivity and net ecosystem productivity, were surprisingly resistant to these changes. We hypothesize that positive and negative faunal-mediated effects in soil communities cancel each other out, causing no net ecosystem effects.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1075805 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Half a Century of Temperate Non-Forest Vegetation Changes: No Net Loss in Species Richness, but Considerable Shifts in Taxonomic and Functional Composition.
Glob Chang Biol
January 2025
Department of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
In recent decades, global change and local anthropogenic pressures have severely affected natural ecosystems and their biodiversity. Although disentangling the effects of these factors is difficult, they are reflected in changes in the functional composition of plant communities. We present a comprehensive, large-scale analysis of long-term changes in plant communities of various non-forest habitat types in the Czech Republic based on 1154 vegetation-plot time series from 53 resurvey studies comprising 3909 vegetation-plot records.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA Generalized Bayesian Stochastic Block Model for Microbiome Community Detection.
Stat Med
February 2025
Department of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas.
Advances in next-generation sequencing technology have enabled the high-throughput profiling of metagenomes and accelerated microbiome studies. Recently, there has been a rise in quantitative studies that aim to decipher the microbiome co-occurrence network and its underlying community structure based on metagenomic sequence data. Uncovering the complex microbiome community structure is essential to understanding the role of the microbiome in disease progression and susceptibility.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe clockwork of insect activity: Advancing ecological understanding through automation.
J Anim Ecol
January 2025
Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB), Museum Koenig, Centre for Biodiversity Monitoring and Conservation Science, Bonn, Germany.
Understanding insect behaviour and its underlying drivers is vital for interpreting changes in local biodiversity and predicting future trends. Conventional insect traps are typically limited to assess the composition of local insect communities over longer time periods and provide only limited insights into the effects of abiotic factors, such as light on species activity. Achieving finer temporal resolution is labour-intensive or only possible under laboratory conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMore Than Meets the Eye: Unraveling the Interactions Between Skin Microbiota and Habitat in an Opportunistic Amphibian.
Microb Ecol
January 2025
Conservation Genomics Research Unit and Animal, Environmental and Antique DNA Platform, Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, San Michele All'Adige, TN, Italy.
With amphibians still holding the record as the most threatened class of terrestrial vertebrates, their skin microbiota has been shown to play a relevant role in their survival in a fast-changing world. Yet little is known about how abiotic factors associated with different aquatic habitats impact these skin microorganisms. Here we chose the yellow-bellied toad (Bombina variegata), a small anuran that colonizes a wide range of wetland habitats, to investigate how the diversity and composition of both its bacterial and fungal skin communities vary across different habitats and with water characteristics (temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen) of these habitats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExploring the Molecular Composition of Dissolved Organic Matter and Its Connection to Microbial Communities in Industrial-Scale Anaerobic Digestion of Chicken Manure.
Toxics
January 2025
School of Computer Science and Hubei Key Laboratory of Intelligent Geo-Information Processing, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430078, China.
Anaerobic digestion (AD) technology offers significant advantages in addressing environmental issues arising from the intensification of livestock production since it enables waste reduction and energy recovery. However, the molecular composition of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and its linkages to microbial biodiversity during the industrial-scale AD process of chicken manure (CM) remains unclear. In this study, the chemical structure of CM digestate-derived DOM was characterized by using multi-spectroscopic techniques and ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry, and the microbial composition was detected by using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!