Linking Microbial and Ecosystem Ecology Using Ecological Stoichiometry: A Synthesis of Conceptual and Empirical Approaches

By E. Hall, F. Maixner, O. Franklin, H. Daims, Andreas Richter, T. Battin. Ecosystems, 2011

104 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Currently, one of the biggest challenges in microbial and ecosystem ecology is to develop conceptual models that organize the growing body of information on environmental microbiology into a clear mechanistic framework with a direct link to ecosystem processes. Doing so will enable development of testable hypotheses to better direct future research and increase understanding of key constraints on biogeochemical networks. Although the understanding of phenotypic and genotypic diversity of microorganisms in the environment is rapidly accumulating, how controls on microbial physiology ultimately affect biogeochemical fluxes remains poorly understood. We propose that insight into constraints on biogeochemical cycles can be achieved by a more rigorous evaluation of microbial community biomass composition within the context of ecological stoichiometry. Multiple recent studies have pointed to microbial biomass stoichiometry as an important determinant of when microorganisms retain or recycle mineral nutrients. We identify the relevant cellular components that most likely drive changes in microbial biomass stoichiometry by defining a conceptual model rooted in ecological stoichiometry. More importantly, we show how X-ray microanalysis (XRMA), nanoscale secondary ion mass spectroscopy (NanoSIMS), Raman microspectroscopy, and in situ hybridization techniques (for example, FISH) can be applied in concert to allow for direct empirical evaluation of the proposed conceptual framework. This approach links an important piece of the ecological literature, ecological stoichiometry, with the molecular front of the microbial revolution, in an attempt to provide new insight into how microbial physiology could constrain ecosystem processes.

Subfields: Ecology, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1ffa01dedecd4c2119f1e62a86f6f4fd82c32ad8

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Citations in the corpus

Soil biodiversity, biological indicators and soil ecosystem services—an overview of European approaches (2012, methodology): “Procedures and protocols, based on ISO standards [41-43], were tested in pilot sites in France, Ireland, Portugal and Hungary to assess the efficiency and sensitivity of the indicators across a range of land-use categories at a European scale [9].”
Ecoenzymatic Stoichiometry and Ecological Theory (2012, background): “Because TER links biomass composition and growth efficiency, values vary by the extent to which elemental homeostasis is maintained in relation to external resource supply (Gusewell & Gessner 2009, Hladyz et al. 2009, Franklin et al. 2011, Hall et al. 2011).”
Ecological stoichiometry: An elementary approach using basic principles (2013, methodology): “Other, recent studies on bacterial stoichiometry are adopting new techniques to measure elemental and macromolecular composition of individual cells (Hall et al. 2011a,b).”