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Can we predict keystones?

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 17, page 193 (2019)Cite this article

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In their recent Opinion article, Banerjee, Schlaeppi and van der Heijden claim that microbial networks can identify keystones; that is, taxa with a high impact on the structure and functioning of ecosystems (Keystone taxa as drivers of microbiome structure and functioning. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 16, 567–576 (2018))1. Although we agree with the authors on the importance of keystones, we doubt that a highly connected taxon in a microbial network (a hub) is necessarily a keystone, and we therefore want to moderate their claim that over 200 microbial keystones have been identified.

Keystones are of particular interest because they have a greater impact on the ecosystem than other taxa. The classic experimental validation of keystones involves comparing the effects of keystone removal and/or addition with the removal and/or addition of other community members. As such experiments are difficult to carry out, only few microbial taxa have been experimentally confirmed as keystones2,3,4,5. If keystones could be accurately predicted from microbial networks, experiments would no longer be required. However, edges in microbial networks usually do not represent known ecological interactions, but rather statistically significant co-occurrences or mutual exclusions of taxa in sequencing data.

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References

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  1. KU Leuven Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Rega Institute, Laboratory of Molecular Bacteriology, Leuven, Belgium

    Lisa Röttjers & Karoline Faust

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  1. Lisa Röttjers
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  2. Karoline Faust
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Correspondence to Karoline Faust.

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Röttjers, L., Faust, K. Can we predict keystones?. Nat Rev Microbiol 17, 193 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-018-0132-y

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