Morrison-Whittle Peter, Goddard Matthew R
The School of Biological Sciences, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
ISME J. 2015 Sep;9(9):2003-11. doi: 10.1038/ismej.2015.18. Epub 2015 Mar 10.
We have a limited understanding of the relative contributions of different processes that regulate microbial communities, which are crucial components of both natural and agricultural ecosystems. The contributions of selective and neutral processes in defining community composition are often confounded in field studies because as one moves through space, environments also change. Managed ecosystems provide an excellent opportunity to control for this and evaluate the relative strength of these processes by minimising differences between comparable niches separated at different geographic scales. We use next-generation sequencing to characterize the variance in fungal communities inhabiting adjacent fruit, soil and bark in comparable vineyards across 1000 kms in New Zealand. By compartmentalizing community variation, we reveal that niche explains at least four times more community variance than geographic location. We go beyond merely demonstrating that different communities are found in both different niches and locations by quantifying the forces that define these patterns. Overall, selection unsurprisingly predominantly shapes these microbial communities, but we show the balance of neutral processes also have a significant role in defining community assemblage in eukaryotic microbes.
我们对调节微生物群落的不同过程的相对贡献了解有限，而微生物群落是自然生态系统和农业生态系统的关键组成部分。在实地研究中，选择性过程和中性过程对群落组成的贡献常常相互混淆，因为随着空间位置的变化，环境也会改变。人工管理的生态系统为控制这一情况提供了绝佳机会，通过最小化不同地理尺度上可比生态位之间的差异，来评估这些过程的相对强度。我们使用下一代测序技术来表征新西兰1000公里范围内可比葡萄园相邻果实、土壤和树皮中真菌群落的差异。通过划分群落变异，我们发现生态位对群落变异的解释至少是地理位置的四倍。我们不仅证明了在不同的生态位和位置存在不同的群落，还通过量化定义这些模式的力量，进一步深入研究。总体而言，不出所料，选择在很大程度上塑造了这些微生物群落，但我们也表明，中性过程的平衡在真核微生物群落组装中也起着重要作用。
