Niche and metabolic principles explain patterns of diversity and distribution: theory and a case study with soil bacterial communities.

ABSTRACT: The causes of biodiversity patterns are controversial and elusive due to complex environmental variation, covarying changes in communities, and lack of baseline and null theories to differentiate straightforward causes from more complex mechanisms. To address these limitations, we developed general diversity theory integrating metabolic principles with niche-based community assembly. We evaluated this theory by investigating patterns in the diversity and distribution of soil bacteria taxa across four orders of magnitude variation in spatial scale on an Antarctic mountainside in low complexity, highly oligotrophic soils. Our theory predicts that lower temperatures should reduce taxon niche widths along environmental gradients due to decreasing growth rates, and the changing niche widths sho

SUBMITTER: Okie JG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4590432 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature