Integrating microbial ecology into ecosystem models: challenges and priorities
By K. Treseder, T. Balser, M. Bradford, Eoin L. Brodie, E. Dubinsky, V. Eviner, Kirsten Hofmockel, J. Lennon, U. Levine, B. MacGregor and 2 more. Biogeochemistry, 2012
250 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Microbial communities can potentially mediate feedbacks between global change and ecosystem function, owing to their sensitivity to environmental change and their control over critical biogeochemical processes. Numerous ecosystem models have been developed to predict global change effects, but most do not consider microbial mechanisms in detail. In this idea paper, we examine the extent to which incorporation of microbial ecology into ecosystem models improves predictions of carbon (C) dynamics under warming, changes in precipitation regime, and anthropogenic nitrogen (N) enrichment. We focus on three cases in which this approach might be especially valuable: temporal dynamics in microbial responses to environmental change, variation in ecological function within microbial communities, and N effects on microbial activity. Four microbially-based models have addressed these scenarios. In each case, predictions of the microbial-based models differ—sometimes substantially—from comparable conventional models. However, validation and parameterization of model performance is challenging. We recommend that the development of microbial-based models must occur in conjunction with the development of theoretical frameworks that predict the temporal responses of microbial communities, the phylogenetic distribution of microbial functions, and the response of microbes to N enrichment.
Subfields: Ecology, Molecular Biology, Oceanography
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1c23b4190c2d5937fe54a78c9354904b0ad96328
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Citations in the corpus
- Direct and indirect effects of climate change on soil microbial and soil microbial‐plant interactions: What lies ahead? (2015, background): “E-mail: aimee.classen@snm.ku.dk”
- Stoichiometry constrains microbial response to root exudation- insights from a model and a field experiment in a temperate forest (2012, methodology): “Here, we use the model to make predictions that are then tested experimentally with a field experiment, consistent with identified research needs (Treseder et al., 2012).”