Browsing by Author "Crowther TW"

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    Globally invariant metabolism but density-diversity mismatch in springtails
    (Springer Nature Limited, 2023-02-07) Potapov AM; Guerra CA; van den Hoogen J; Babenko A; Bellini BC; Berg MP; Chown SL; Deharveng L; Kováč Ľ; Kuznetsova NA; Ponge J-F; Potapov MB; Russell DJ; Alexandre D; Alatalo JM; Arbea JI; Bandyopadhyaya I; Bernava V; Bokhorst S; Bolger T; Castaño-Meneses G; Chauvat M; Chen T-W; Chomel M; Classen AT; Cortet J; Čuchta P; Manuela de la Pedrosa A; Ferreira SSD; Fiera C; Filser J; Franken O; Fujii S; Koudji EG; Gao M; Gendreau-Berthiaume B; Gomez-Pamies DF; Greve M; Tanya Handa I; Heiniger C; Holmstrup M; Homet P; Ivask M; Janion-Scheepers C; Jochum M; Joimel S; Claudia S Jorge B; Jucevica E; Ferlian O; Iuñes de Oliveira Filho LC; Klauberg-Filho O; Baretta D; Krab EJ; Kuu A; de Lima ECA; Lin D; Lindo Z; Liu A; Lu J-Z; Luciañez MJ; Marx MT; McCary MA; Minor MA; Nakamori T; Negri I; Ochoa-Hueso R; Palacios-Vargas JG; Pollierer MM; Querner P; Raschmanová N; Rashid MI; Raymond-Léonard LJ; Rousseau L; Saifutdinov RA; Salmon S; Sayer EJ; Scheunemann N; Scholz C; Seeber J; Shveenkova YB; Stebaeva SK; Sterzynska M; Sun X; Susanti WI; Taskaeva AA; Thakur MP; Tsiafouli MA; Turnbull MS; Twala MN; Uvarov AV; Venier LA; Widenfalk LA; Winck BR; Winkler D; Wu D; Xie Z; Yin R; Zeppelini D; Crowther TW; Eisenhauer N; Scheu S
    Soil life supports the functioning and biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems. Springtails (Collembola) are among the most abundant soil arthropods regulating soil fertility and flow of energy through above- and belowground food webs. However, the global distribution of springtail diversity and density, and how these relate to energy fluxes remains unknown. Here, using a global dataset representing 2470 sites, we estimate the total soil springtail biomass at 27.5 megatons carbon, which is threefold higher than wild terrestrial vertebrates, and record peak densities up to 2 million individuals per square meter in the tundra. Despite a 20-fold biomass difference between the tundra and the tropics, springtail energy use (community metabolism) remains similar across the latitudinal gradient, owing to the changes in temperature with latitude. Neither springtail density nor community metabolism is predicted by local species richness, which is high in the tropics, but comparably high in some temperate forests and even tundra. Changes in springtail activity may emerge from latitudinal gradients in temperature, predation and resource limitation in soil communities. Contrasting relationships of biomass, diversity and activity of springtail communities with temperature suggest that climate warming will alter fundamental soil biodiversity metrics in different directions, potentially restructuring terrestrial food webs and affecting soil functioning.
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    Integrating pH into the metabolic theory of ecology to predict bacterial diversity in soil
    (National Academy of Sciences, 2023-01-17) Luan L; Jiang Y; Dini-Andreote F; Crowther TW; Li P; Bahram M; Zheng J; Xu Q; Zhang X-X; Sun B; Brown J
    Microorganisms play essential roles in soil ecosystem functioning and maintenance, but methods are currently lacking for quantitative assessments of the mechanisms underlying microbial diversity patterns observed across disparate systems and scales. Here we established a quantitative model to incorporate pH into metabolic theory to capture and explain some of the unexplained variation in the relationship between temperature and soil bacterial diversity. We then tested and validated our newly developed models across multiple scales of ecological organization. At the species level, we modeled the diversification rate of the model bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens evolving under laboratory media gradients varying in temperature and pH. At the community level, we modeled patterns of bacterial communities in paddy soils across a continental scale, which included natural gradients of pH and temperature. Last, we further extended our model at a global scale by integrating a meta-analysis comprising 870 soils collected worldwide from a wide range of ecosystems. Our results were robust in consistently predicting the distributional patterns of bacterial diversity across soil temperature and pH gradients-with model variation explaining from 7 to 66% of the variation in bacterial diversity, depending on the scale and system complexity. Together, our study represents a nexus point for the integration of soil bacterial diversity and quantitative models with the potential to be used at distinct spatiotemporal scales. By mechanistically representing pH into metabolic theory, our study enhances our capacity to explain and predict the patterns of bacterial diversity and functioning under current or future climate change scenarios.