Yang Yunfeng
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Trends Microbiol. 2021 Oct;29(10):874-882. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2021.04.004. Epub 2021 May 21.
Functional traits are measurable characteristics that affect an organism's fitness under certain environmental conditions. The use of functional traits in microbial ecology holds great promise for improving our ability to develop biogeochemical models and predict ecosystem responses to global changes. Notably, functional traits could be decoupled from taxonomic relatedness, owing to horizontal gene transfer among microorganisms and adaptive evolution. In recent years, our knowledge about microbial functional traits has been substantially enhanced, thereby revealing the multitude of ecological processes in driving community assembly and dynamics. Here, I summarize the emerging patterns of how microbial functional traits respond to changing environments, which considerably differ from better-studied microbial taxonomy. I use niche and neutral theories to explain microbial functional traits. Finally, I highlight future challenges to analyze, elucidate, and utilize functional traits in microbial ecology.
功能性状是在特定环境条件下影响生物体适应性的可测量特征。在微生物生态学中使用功能性状对于提高我们开发生物地球化学模型和预测生态系统对全球变化响应的能力具有巨大潜力。值得注意的是，由于微生物之间的水平基因转移和适应性进化，功能性状可能与分类学相关性脱钩。近年来，我们对微生物功能性状的了解有了大幅提高，从而揭示了驱动群落组装和动态的众多生态过程。在这里，我总结了微生物功能性状如何响应变化环境的新出现模式，这些模式与研究得更充分的微生物分类学有很大不同。我用生态位和中性理论来解释微生物功能性状。最后，我强调了在微生物生态学中分析、阐明和利用功能性状未来面临的挑战。
