Communications Biology (Apr 2021)

Environmental connectivity controls diversity in soil microbial communities

  • Manupriyam Dubey,
  • Noushin Hadadi,
  • Serge Pelet,
  • Nicolas Carraro,
  • David R. Johnson,
  • Jan R. van der Meer

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02023-2
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
pp. 1 – 15

Abstract

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Manupriyam Dubey et al. use experimental systems with naturally derived soil microbiomes in liquid suspensions and encapsulated beads to compare community dynamics in well-connected and poorly connected environments. While their results show that microbial growth does not vary between conditions, they report that low connectivity led to reduced microbial diversity and suggest that these reductions in microbial diversity may be due to increased negative interspecific interactions.