Gabriel Reuben Smith

ETH Zurich | ETH Zürich · Department of Environmental Systems Science

Decomposition has historically been considered a function of climate and substrate but new research highlights the significant role of specific micro‐organisms and their interactions. In particular, wood decay is better predicted by variation in fungal communities than in climate. Multiple links exist: interspecific competition slows decomposition...

Wildfire affects our planet's biogeochemistry both by burning biomass and by driving changes in ecological communities and landcover. Some plants and ecosystem types are threatened by increasing fire pressure while others respond positively to fire, growing in local and regional abundance when it occurs regularly. However, quantifying total ecosyst...

Soil organic matter (SOM) is central to soil carbon (C) storage and terrestrial nutrient cycling. New data have upended the traditional model of stabilization, which held that stable SOM was mostly made of undecomposed plant molecules. We now know that microbial by-products and dead cells comprise unexpectedly large amounts of stable SOM because th...

Findings of immense microbial diversity are at odds with observed functional redundancy, as competitive exclusion should hinder coexistence. Tradeoffs between dispersal and competitive ability could resolve this contradiction, but the extent to which they influence microbial community assembly is unclear. Because fungi influence the biogeochemical...

Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) symbioses have evolved a minimum of 78 times independently from saprotrophic lineages, indicating the potential for functional overlap between ECM and saprotrophic fungi. ECM fungi have the capacity to decompose organic matter, and although there is increasing evidence that some saprotrophic fungi exhibit the capacity to enter...

Microbial life represents the majority of Earth’s biodiversity. Across disparate disciplines from medicine to forestry, scientists continue to discover how the microbiome drives essential, macro-scale processes in plants, animals and entire ecosystems. Yet, there is an emerging realization that Earth’s microbial biodiversity is under threat. Here w...

Fungi and bacteria are the two dominant groups of soil microbial communities worldwide. By controlling the turnover of soil organic matter, these organisms directly regulate the cycling of carbon between the soil and the atmosphere. Fundamental differences in the physiology and life history of bacteria and fungi suggest that variation in the biogeo...

Due to massive energetic investments in woody support structures, trees are subject to unique physiological, mechanical, and ecological pressures not experienced by herbaceous plants. Despite a wealth of studies exploring trait relationships across the entire plant kingdom, the dominant traits underpinning these unique aspects of tree form and func...

Fungi and bacteria are the two dominant groups of soil microbial communities worldwide. By controlling the turnover of soil organic matter, these organisms directly regulate the exchange of carbon between the soil and the atmosphere. Fundamental differences in the physiology and life history of bacteria and fungi suggest that variation in the bioge...

A bstract Due to massive energetic investments in woody support structures, trees are subject to unique physiological, mechanical, and ecological pressures not experienced by herbaceous plants. When considering trait relationships across the entire plant kingdom, plant trait frameworks typically must omit traits unique to large woody species, there...

Global change has resulted in chronic shifts in fire regimes. Variability in the sensitivity of tree communities to multi-decadal changes in fire regimes is critical to anticipating shifts in ecosystem structure and function, yet remains poorly understood. Here, we address the overall effects of fire on tree communities and the factors controlling...

Global change has shifted fire regimes, but the long-term consequences for ecosystems are uncertain because of variability in environmental conditions, fire types, and plant composition. We tested how fire-frequency manipulations of 16-64 years affect tree communities and traits using 374 plots from 29 sites on four continents. More frequently burn...

This article is a Commentary on Fernandez et al., 226: 569–582.

Global analyses are emerging as valuable complements to local and regional scale studies in ecology and are useful for examining many of the major environmental issues that we face today. Soil ecology has significantly benefited from these developments, with recent syntheses unearthing interesting, unexpected biogeographic patterns in belowground b...

Ecosystems with ectomycorrhizal plants have high soil carbon:nitrogen ratios, but it is not clear why. The Gadgil effect, where competition between ectomycorrhizal and saprotrophic fungi for nitrogen slows litter decomposition, may increase soil carbon. However, experimental evidence for the Gadgil effect is equivocal. Here, we apply resource‐ratio...