Cardiff School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF10 3AX, UK.
Institute for Molecules and Materials, Radboud University, 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
ISME J. 2021 Mar;15(3):720-731. doi: 10.1038/s41396-020-00808-7. Epub 2020 Oct 16.
The space in which organisms live determines health and physicality, shaping the way in which they interact with their peers. Space, therefore, is critically important for species diversity and the function performed by individuals within mixed communities. The biotic and abiotic factors defined by the space that organisms occupy are ecologically significant and the difficulty in quantifying space-defined parameters within complex systems limits the study of ecological processes. Here, we overcome this problem using a tractable system whereby spatial heterogeneity in interacting fungal wood decay communities demonstrates that scale and patchiness of territory directly influence coexistence dynamics. Spatial arrangement in 2- and 3-dimensions resulted in measurable metabolic differences that provide evidence of a clear biological response to changing landscape architecture. This is of vital importance to microbial systems in all ecosystems globally, as our results demonstrate that community function is driven by the effects of spatial dynamics.
生物所处的空间决定了其健康和生理状况，塑造了它们与同类相互作用的方式。因此，空间对于物种多样性以及混合群落中个体的功能至关重要。生物和非生物因素由生物体占据的空间来定义，具有生态意义，而在复杂系统中量化空间定义参数的难度限制了对生态过程的研究。在这里，我们使用一种易于处理的系统来克服这个问题，该系统通过相互作用的真菌木材腐烂群落中的空间异质性表明，领土的规模和斑块直接影响共存动力学。在 2- 和 3- 维空间中的排列导致可测量的代谢差异，为对不断变化的景观结构的生物学反应提供了证据。这对于全球所有生态系统中的微生物系统都至关重要，因为我们的结果表明，群落功能是由空间动态的影响驱动的。
