Department of Aquatic Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, The Netherlands.
ISME J. 2013 Mar;7(3):533-42. doi: 10.1038/ismej.2012.138. Epub 2012 Nov 22.
Dispersal limitation is generally considered to have little influence on the spatial structure of biodiversity in microbial metacommunities. This notion derives mainly from the analysis of spatial patterns in the field, but experimental tests of dispersal limitation using natural communities are rare for prokaryotes and, to our knowledge, non-existent for viruses. We studied the effects of dispersal intensity (three levels) and patch heterogeneity (two levels) on the structure of replicate experimental metacommunities of bacteria and viruses using outdoor mesocosms with plankton communities from natural ponds and lakes. Low levels of dispersal resulted in a decrease in the compositional differences (beta diversity) among the communities of both bacteria and viruses, but we found no effects of patch heterogeneity. The reductions in beta diversity are unlikely to be a result of mass effects and only partly explained by indirect dispersal-mediated interactions with phytoplankton and zooplankton. Our results suggest that even a very limited exchange among local communities can alter the trajectory of bacterial and viral communities at small temporal and spatial scales.
扩散限制通常被认为对微生物混合群落的生物多样性的空间结构影响不大。这种观点主要源于对野外空间模式的分析，但对自然群落中扩散限制的实验测试对于原核生物来说很少见，据我们所知，对于病毒来说则不存在。我们使用来自天然池塘和湖泊的浮游生物群落的户外中观模型来研究扩散强度（三个水平）和斑块异质性（两个水平）对细菌和病毒的重复实验混合群落结构的影响。低水平的扩散导致细菌和病毒群落之间的组成差异（β多样性）减少，但我们没有发现斑块异质性的影响。β多样性的减少不太可能是质量效应的结果，并且仅部分通过与浮游植物和浮游动物的间接扩散介导的相互作用来解释。我们的结果表明，即使在当地社区之间进行非常有限的交换，也可以在小时间和空间尺度上改变细菌和病毒群落的轨迹。
