9 December 2004
Eukaryote diversity
It has long been recognized that the number of identifiable plant and animal species increases with the size of the area sampled. This 'species–area relationship' has been shown repeatedly for plants and animals, but not for microbial communities. Two groups now confirm that this relationship does apply for microbes. Green et al. used a genetic data set mapping the locations of over 100,000 pairs of soil samples to estimate microbial biogeographical patterns and extrapolate microbial species–area relationships from local to continental scales in Australia. The results confirm that soil microbial communities have spatial structure across scales spanning 15 orders of magnitude. Horner-Devine et al. sampled bacterial communities in a Rhode Island salt marsh and found that bacterial communities located close together were more similar in composition than those farther apart, confirming that the number of different bacterial types does increase with area.
Spatial scaling of microbial eukaryote diversity
JESSICA L. GREEN, ANDREW J. HOLMES, MARK WESTOBY,
IAN OLIVER, DAVID BRISCOE, MARK DANGERFIELD, MICHAEL GILLINGS & ANDREW
J. BEATTIE
Nature 432, 747–750 (2004); doi:10.1038/nature03034
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A taxa-area relationship for bacteria
M. CLAIRE HORNER-DEVINE, MELISSA LAGE, JENNIFER B.
HUGHES & BRENDAN J. M. BOHANNAN
Nature 432, 750–753 (2004); doi:10.1038/nature03073
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