Linking Bacterial-Fungal Relationships to Microbial Diversity and Soil Nutrient Cycling

Nutrient Relationships: Cycling

Nutrient Relationships: Cycling

Figure 1. Nutrients may be tied up in bryophytes for decades, or recycle within months, in forests with abundant bryophytes, as in this forest with Isothecium myosuroides. Photo by Michael Lüth. Few quantitative studies have addressed the role of bryophytes in ecosystem nutrient cycling. Nevertheless, bryophytes may play a significant role in N retention and release in the ecosystem (Figure 1)....

Editorial: Linking Ecosystem Function to Microbial Diversity

Understanding the link between microbial diversity and ecosystem processes is a fundamental goal of microbial ecologists, yet we still have a rudimentary knowledge of how changes in diversity affect nutrient cycling and energy transfer in ecosystems. Due to the complexity of the problem, many published studies on this topic have been conducted in artificial or manipulated systems. Studies of ar...

Microbial diversity and soil functions

Soil is a complex and dynamic biological system, and still in 2003 it is difficult to determine the composition of microbial communities in soil. We are also limited in the determination of microbially mediated reactions because present assays for determining the overall rate of entire metabolic processes (such as respiration) or specific enzyme activities (such as urease, protease and phosphom...

Interactive effects of plant species diversity and elevated CO2 on soil biota and nutrient cycling.

Terrestrial ecosystems consist of mutually dependent producer and decomposer subsystems, but not much is known on how their interactions are modified by plant diversity and elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Factorially manipulating grassland plant species diversity and atmospheric CO2 concentrations for five years, we tested whether high diversity or elevated CO2 sustain larger or more a...