Soil microbial communities play an important role in nutrient cycling and nutrient availability, especially in unimproved soils. In grazed pastures, sheep urine causes local changes in nutrient concentration which may be a source of heterogeneity in microbial community structure. In the present study, we investigated the effects of synthetic urine on soil microbial community structure, using ph...

a long-term study was conducted between 1985 and 2003 on rehabilitation trials at sishen ironore mine, south africa, to identify grass species that would survive in the artificial growth medium appliedto the sites, and to determine the most suitable medium for sustainable vegetation growth. vegetationestablishment was tested at slopes of 18° and 34° and with five different cover materials. afte...

The widespread paradigm in ecology that community structure determines function has recently been challenged by the high complexity of microbial communities. Here, we investigate the patterns of and connections between microbial community structure and microbially-mediated ecological function across different forest management practices and temporal changes in leaf litter across beech forest ec...

BACKGROUND Intestinal microbiota play an important role in maintaining the homeostasis of the host immune system. To analyze the alteration of the intestinal microbial community structure in Korean Crohn's disease (CD) patients, we performed a comparative metagenomic analysis between healthy people and CD patients using fecal samples and mucosal tissues of ileocecal valve. METHODS 16S rRNA ge...

The vertebrate microbiome contributes to disease resistance, but few experiments have examined the link between microbiome community structure and disease resistance functions. Chytridiomycosis, a major cause of amphibian population declines, is a skin disease caused by the fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). In a factorial experiment, bullfrog skin microbiota was reduced with antibiot...

ABSTRACT The processes and mechanisms of community assembly and its relationships to community functioning are central issues in ecology. Both deterministic and stochastic factors play important roles in shaping community composition and structure, but the connection between community assembly and ecosystem functioning remains elusive, especially in microbial communities. Here, we used microbia...

BACKGROUND The microbial fuel cell represents a novel technology to simultaneously generate electric power and treat wastewater. Both pure organic matter and real wastewater can be used as fuel to generate electric power and the substrate type can influence the microbial community structure. In the present study, rice straw, an important feedstock source in the world, was used as fuel after pre...

Mesoscale circulation generated by the Loop Current in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM) delivers growth-limiting nutrients to the microbial plankton of the euphotic zone. Consequences of physicochemically driven community shifts on higher order consumers and subsequent impacts on the biological carbon pump remain poorly understood. This study evaluates microbial plankton <10 μm abundance and ...

a long-term study was conducted between 1985 and 2003 on rehabilitation trials at sishen ironore mine, south africa, to identify grass species that would survive in the artificial growth medium appliedto the sites, and to determine the most suitable medium for sustainable vegetation growth. vegetationestablishment was tested at slopes of 18° and 34° and with five different cover materials. afte...

In a complex environment, it can be difficult to assess the degree to which an environmental variable influences microbial community structure. We propose a method that uses the community data to "predict" the value of the presumed dominant variable. The assumption is that in order to "predict" the variable, the community composition must be sensitive to or affected by the variable in question....