Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Canada. Institute of Applied Mathematics, University of British Columbia, Canada. Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia, Canada.
Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Canada. Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, Canada. Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Canada.
Science. 2016 Sep 16;353(6305):1272-7. doi: 10.1126/science.aaf4507.
Microbial metabolism powers biogeochemical cycling in Earth's ecosystems. The taxonomic composition of microbial communities varies substantially between environments, but the ecological causes of this variation remain largely unknown. We analyzed taxonomic and functional community profiles to determine the factors that shape marine bacterial and archaeal communities across the global ocean. By classifying >30,000 marine microorganisms into metabolic functional groups, we were able to disentangle functional from taxonomic community variation. We find that environmental conditions strongly influence the distribution of functional groups in marine microbial communities by shaping metabolic niches, but only weakly influence taxonomic composition within individual functional groups. Hence, functional structure and composition within functional groups constitute complementary and roughly independent "axes of variation" shaped by markedly different processes.
微生物代谢为地球生态系统的生物地球化学循环提供动力。微生物群落的分类组成在不同环境中差异很大，但这种变化的生态原因在很大程度上仍不清楚。我们分析了分类和功能群落的特征，以确定塑造全球海洋中海洋细菌和古菌群落的因素。通过将超过 30,000 种海洋微生物分类为代谢功能群，我们能够将功能群落的变化与分类群落的变化区分开来。我们发现，环境条件通过塑造代谢小生境强烈影响海洋微生物群落中功能群的分布，但对单个功能群内的分类组成影响较弱。因此，功能结构和组成在功能群内构成了由明显不同的过程塑造的互补且大致独立的“变化轴”。
