The microbial contribution to macroecology.
The microbial contribution to macroecology.
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DOI：
10.3389/fmicb.2014.00203
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发表时间：
2014
影响因子：
5.2
通讯作者：
Fierer N
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Barberán A;Casamayor EO;Fierer N
最近在微生物生态学领域的研究出现了爆炸式增长，部分原因是方法学的改进，使其能够在几年前无法想象的程度上表征微生物群落。此外，在生态学领域，人们越来越认识到微生物在生物体和生态系统的健康中发挥着关键作用。尽管取得了这些进展，但宏观生态学和微生物生态学的理论框架之间仍然存在着一个重要的差距。我们强调了微生物的两个特质，这是理解宏观生态模式及其机械驱动程序的基础。首先，高扩散率提供了新的机会来测试生态位，随机和历史过程的相对重要性，在构建生物群落。其次，高物种形成率可能导致生态和进化时间尺度的收敛。在回顾了这些独特的方面，我们讨论了改善微生物的概念整合到宏观生态学的策略。作为例子，我们讨论了使用系统发育生态学作为一种综合的方法来探索整个生命树的模式。然后，我们展示了生物多样性的两个一般理论（即，最近发展的随机几何理论和中性理论）可以适用于微生物。我们展示了如何整合进化和生态机制的概念模型可以有助于微生物生态学和宏观生态学的统一。
There has been a recent explosion of research within the field of microbial ecology that has been fueled, in part, by methodological improvements that make it feasible to characterize microbial communities to an extent that was inconceivable only a few years ago. Furthermore, there is increasing recognition within the field of ecology that microorganisms play a critical role in the health of organisms and ecosystems. Despite these developments, an important gap still persists between the theoretical framework of macroecology and microbial ecology. We highlight two idiosyncrasies of microorganisms that are fundamental to understanding macroecological patterns and their mechanistic drivers. First, high dispersal rates provide novel opportunities to test the relative importance of niche, stochastic, and historical processes in structuring biological communities. Second, high speciation rates potentially lead to the convergence of ecological and evolutionary time scales. After reviewing these unique aspects, we discuss strategies for improving the conceptual integration of microbes into macroecology. As examples, we discuss the use of phylogenetic ecology as an integrative approach to explore patterns across the tree of life. Then we demonstrate how two general theories of biodiversity (i.e., the recently developed theory of stochastic geometry and the neutral theory) can be adapted to microorganisms. We demonstrate how conceptual models that integrate evolutionary and ecological mechanisms can contribute to the unification of microbial ecology and macroecology.