Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

The contribution of species richness and composition to bacterial services

Nature volume 436, pages 1157–1160 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Bacterial communities provide important services. They break down pollutants, municipal waste and ingested food, and they are the primary means by which organic matter is recycled to plants and other autotrophs. However, the processes that determine the rate at which these services are supplied are only starting to be identified. Biodiversity influences the way in which ecosystems function1, but the form of the relationship between bacterial biodiversity and functioning remains poorly understood. Here we describe a manipulative experiment that measured how biodiversity affects the functioning of communities containing up to 72 bacterial species constructed from a collection of naturally occurring culturable bacteria. The experimental design allowed us to manipulate large numbers of bacterial species selected at random from those that were culturable. We demonstrate that there is a decelerating relationship between community respiration and increasing bacterial diversity. We also show that both synergistic interactions among bacterial species and the composition of the bacterial community are important in determining the level of ecosystem functioning.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: The relationship between species richness and ecosystem functioning.
Figure 2: Relationship between manipulated species richness ( R ) and ecosystem functioning ( F ) over 28 days.
Figure 3: Relationship between manipulated species richness ( R ) and ecosystem functioning ( F ) over each of the three time periods.
Figure 4: Linear model coefficients as a function of the theoretical quantiles of the normal distribution.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Loreau, M. et al. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: Current knowledge and future challenges. Science 294, 804–808 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Loreau, M. & Hector, A. Partitioning selection and complementarity in biodiversity experiments. Nature 412, 72–76 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Emmerson, M. C., Solan, M., Emes, C., Paterson, D. M. & Raffaelli, D. Consistent patterns and the idiosyncratic effects of biodiversity in marine ecosystems. Nature 411, 73–77 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Hooper, D. U. et al. Effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning: A consensus of current knowledge. Ecol. Monogr. 75, 3–35 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Garland, J. L. & Lehman, R. M. Dilution/extinction of community phenotypic characters to estimate relative structural diversity in mixed communities. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol. 30, 333–343 (1999)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Griffiths, B. S. et al. An examination of the biodiversity–ecosystem function relationship in arable soil microbial communities. Soil Biol. Biochem. 33, 1713–1722 (2001)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Franklin, R. B., Garland, J. L., Bolster, C. H. & Mills, A. L. Impact of dilution on microbial community structure and functional potential: Comparison of numerical simulations and batch culture experiments. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 67, 702–712 (2001)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Yin, B., Crowley, D., Sparovek, G., De Melo, W. J. & Borneman, J. Bacterial functional redundancy along a soil reclamation gradient. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 66, 4361–4365 (2000)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Fierer, N., Schimel, J. P. & Holden, P. A. Influence of drying-rewetting frequency on soil bacterial community structure. Microb. Ecol. 45, 63–71 (2003)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Cavigelli, M. A. & Robertson, G. P. The functional significance of denitrifier community composition in a terrestrial ecosystem. Ecology 81, 1402–1414 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Cavigelli, M. A. & Robertson, G. P. Role of denitrifier diversity in rates of nitrous oxide consumption in a terrestrial ecosystem. Soil. Biol. Biochem. 33, 297–310 (2001)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Naeem, S., Hahn, D. R. & Schuurman, G. Producer–decomposer co-dependency influences biodiversity effects. Nature 403, 762–764 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Griffiths, B. S. et al. The relationship between microbial community structure and functional stability, tested experimentally in an upland pasture soil. Microb. Ecol. 47, 104–113 (2004)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Horz, H. P., Barbrook, A., Field, C. B. & Bohannan, B. J. M. Ammonia-oxidizing bacteria respond to multifactorial global change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 15136–15141 (2004)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Huston, M. A. Hidden treatments in ecological experiments: Re-evaluating the ecosystem function of biodiversity. Oecologia 110, 449–460 (1997)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Kitching, R. L. An ecological study of water-filled tree-holes and their position in the woodland ecosystem. J. Anim. Ecol. 40, 281–302 (1971)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Bell, T. et al. Larger islands house more bacterial taxa. Science 308, 1884 (2005)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. van der Heijden, M. G. A. et al. Mycorrhizal fungal diversity determines plant biodiversity, ecosystem variability and productivity. Nature 396, 69–72 (1998)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. McGrady-Steed, J., Harris, P. M. & Morin, P. J. Biodiversity regulates ecosystem predictability. Nature 390, 162–165 (1997)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Tilman, D. et al. Diversity and productivity in a long-term grassland experiment. Science 294, 843–845 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Hector, A. et al. Plant diversity and productivity experiments in European grasslands. Science 286, 1123–1127 (1999)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Curtis, T. F., Head, I. M. & Graham, D. Theoretical ecology for engineering biology. Environ. Sci. Technol. 37, 64A–70A (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Cardinale, B. J., Palmer, M. A. & Collins, S. L. Species diversity enhances ecosystem functioning through interspecific facilitation. Nature 415, 426–429 (2002)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Zengler, K. et al. Cultivating the uncultured. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99, 15681–15686 (2002)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Rappe, M. S. & Giavannoni, S. J. The uncultured microbial majority. Annu. Rev. Microbiol. 57, 369–394 (2003)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Schimel, J. P. & Gulledge, J. Microbial community structure and global trace gases. Global Change Biol. 4, 745–758 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Sasser, M. MIDI Inc. technical note 101: Identification of bacteria by gas chromatography of cellular fatty acids (Newark, 2001).

  28. Thompson, I. P., Bailey, M. J., Ellis, R. J. & Purdy, K. J. Subgrouping of bacterial-populations by cellular fatty-acid composition. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol. 102, 75–84 (1993)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Cohan, F. M. What are bacterial species? Annu. Rev. Microbiol. 56, 457–487 (2002)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Zibilske, L. M. Methods of Soil Analysis, Part 2. Microbiological and Biochemical Properties 835–863 (SSSA, Madison, 1994)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to J. Fryxell, T. Nudds and their graduate students for providing comments on the original manuscript, to A. Singer for help developing the technique to measure bacterial respiration, and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxford for providing the laboratory space. T. B. was supported by Fonds quebecois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, and the Clarendon Fund (Oxford University).Author contributions The experiment was originally conceived by T.B., J.A.N. and A.K.L. The laboratory work was conducted by T.B. with the help of A.K.L. and S.L.T. The experimental design was conceived by A.K.L. and developed by T.B., J.A.N. and B.W.S. The statistical analyses were performed by B.W.S. and T.B. The manuscript was written principally by T.B. with extensive input from J.A.N., B.W.S. and A.K.L.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, OX1 3PS, Oxford, UK

    Thomas Bell

  2. Molecular Microbial Ecology Group, NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Mansfield Road, OX1 3SR, Oxford, UK

    Thomas Bell, Sarah L. Turner & Andrew K. Lilley

  3. Department of Environmental Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada

    Jonathan A. Newman

  4. St. Peter's College, OX1 2DL, Oxford, UK

    Bernard W. Silverman

Authors
  1. Thomas Bell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jonathan A. Newman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Bernard W. Silverman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Sarah L. Turner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Andrew K. Lilley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew K. Lilley.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

Reprints and permissions information is available at npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Discussion

This file contains discussion of additional analysis of the experiment in which we take a detailed look at the interaction between species composition and species richness. (PDF 19 kb)

Supplementary Table S1

This files contains a list of the species level identities used in the experiment. (PDF 13 kb)

Supplementary Table S2

This files contains an outline of the experiment design. (PDF 15 kb)

Supplementary Figure S1

This file contains a figure showing the relationship between the effect of each species on respiration and sensitivity of that effect to the level of diversity. (PDF 19 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bell, T., Newman, J., Silverman, B. et al. The contribution of species richness and composition to bacterial services. Nature 436, 1157–1160 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03891

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03891

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing