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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.

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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.

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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.

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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
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  2. Jonathan A. Newman
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  3. Bernard W. Silverman
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  5. Andrew K. Lilley
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew K. Lilley.

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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)

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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

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