Abstract
Although recent work has shown that both deterministic and stochastic processes are important in structuring microbial communities, the factors that affect the relative contributions of niche and neutral processes are poorly understood. The macrobiological literature indicates that ecological disturbances can influence assembly processes. Thus, we sampled bacterial communities at 4 and 16 weeks following a wildfire and used null deviation analysis to examine the role that time since disturbance has in community assembly. Fire dramatically altered bacterial community structure and diversity as well as soil chemistry for both time-points. Community structure shifted between 4 and 16 weeks for both burned and unburned communities. Community assembly in burned sites 4 weeks after fire was significantly more stochastic than in unburned sites. After 16 weeks, however, burned communities were significantly less stochastic than unburned communities. Thus, we propose a three-phase model featuring shifts in the relative importance of niche and neutral processes as a function of time since disturbance. Because neutral processes are characterized by a decoupling between environmental parameters and community structure, we hypothesize that a better understanding of community assembly may be important in determining where and when detailed studies of community composition are valuable for predicting ecosystem function.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported, in part, through grants from the National Science Foundation to DN, SS and CC (DEB1545913), DEB1120281 to LJ and the Niwot Ridge LTER grant (DEB-1027341) to MW, AT, and SS. This research used the Janus supercomputer, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (award number CNS-0821794) and the University of Colorado Boulder. The Janus supercomputer is a joint effort of the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Denver and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. We thank Timothy Seastedt for comments on our manuscript and the University of Colorado’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology for generous support. We acknowledge Bob Head and Bill Nemergut (WFN) for assisting with sample collection and processing. Our manuscript was greatly improved by comments and suggestions from three anonymous reviewers and the editor.
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Ferrenberg, S., O'Neill, S., Knelman, J. et al. Changes in assembly processes in soil bacterial communities following a wildfire disturbance. ISME J 7, 1102–1111 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2013.11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2013.11
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