Topic
Ecosystem
About: Ecosystem is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25460 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1291375 citations. The topic is also known as: ecological system & Ecosystem.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors mapped the production of five ecosystem services in South Africa: surface water supply, water flow regulation, soil accumulation, soil retention, and carbon storage, and assessed the relationship and spatial congruence between services.
533 citations
TL;DR: This study shows that microbial diversity loss can alter terrestrial ecosystem processes, which suggests that the importance of functional redundancy in soil microbial communities has been overstated.
Abstract: Microbial communities have a central role in ecosystem processes by driving the Earth's biogeochemical cycles. However, the importance of microbial diversity for ecosystem functioning is still debated. Here, we experimentally manipulated the soil microbial community using a dilution approach to analyze the functional consequences of diversity loss. A trait-centered approach was embraced using the denitrifiers as model guild due to their role in nitrogen cycling, a major ecosystem service. How various diversity metrics related to richness, eveness and phylogenetic diversity of the soil denitrifier community were affected by the removal experiment was assessed by 454 sequencing. As expected, the diversity metrics indicated a decrease in diversity in the 1/10(3) and 1/10(5) dilution treatments compared with the undiluted one. However, the extent of dilution and the corresponding reduction in diversity were not commensurate, as a dilution of five orders of magnitude resulted in a 75% decrease in estimated richness. This reduction in denitrifier diversity resulted in a significantly lower potential denitrification activity in soil of up to 4-5 folds. Addition of wheat residues significantly increased differences in potential denitrification between diversity levels, indicating that the resource level can influence the shape of the microbial diversity-functioning relationship. This study shows that microbial diversity loss can alter terrestrial ecosystem processes, which suggests that the importance of functional redundancy in soil microbial communities has been overstated.
532 citations
Centre national de la recherche scientifique1, Joseph Fourier University2, Institut national de la recherche agronomique3, University of Coimbra4, Sewanee: The University of the South5, Stockholm University6, Hebrew University of Jerusalem7, University of Oldenburg8, Macaulay Institute9, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki10, Tel Aviv University11, Université de Sherbrooke12
TL;DR: This work shows the applicability of a set of protocols that can be widely applied to assess the impacts of global change drivers on species, communities and ecosystems.
531 citations
TL;DR: Ecological redundancy is good because it enhances ecosystem resilience, but functionally important groups that have only one or very few species deserve priority conservation attention because their functions could be quickly lost with species extinctions.
Abstract: Confusion over the term ecological redundancy (Walker 1992) requires that the concept be clarified in order to advance the developing theory that maintaining ecosystem function conserves biological diversity. The species approach to conserving biological diversity assumes that the species in trouble are already identified. The ecosystem approach attempts to deal with the problem of conserving all the species in an ecosystem, including those not yet known. This is best achieved by ensuring that the ecosystem continues to function approximately as it has by maintaining its essential structure. Ecosystem stability (the probability of all species persisting) is enhanced if each important functional group of organisms (important for maintaining function and structure) comprises several ecologically equivalent species, each with different responses to environmental factors. In this sense ecological redundancy is good because it enhances ecosystem resilience, but functionally important groups (guilds, functional types) that have only one or very few species deserve priority conservation attention because their functions could be quickly lost with species extinctions.
529 citations
TL;DR: Using wood-decaying fungi as a model system, direct manipulation of early immigration history resulted in three-fold differences in fungal species richness and composition and differences of the same magnitude in the rate of decomposition and carbon release from wood.
Abstract: Community assembly history is increasingly recognized as a fundamental determinant of community structure. However, little is known as to how assembly history may affect ecosystem functioning via its effect on community structure. Using wood-decaying fungi as a model system, we provide experimental evidence that large differences in ecosystem functioning can be caused by small differences in species immigration history during community assembly. Direct manipulation of early immigration history resulted in three-fold differences in fungal species richness and composition and, as a consequence, differences of the same magnitude in the rate of decomposition and carbon release from wood. These effects - which were attributable to the history-dependent outcome of competitive and facilitative interactions - were significant across a range of nitrogen availabilities observed in natural forests. Our results highlight the importance of considering assembly history in explaining ecosystem functioning.
528 citations