Thomas W. Crowther’s research while affiliated with Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and other places

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Publications (34)


Metagenomic insights into inhibition of soil microbial carbon metabolism by phosphorus limitation during vegetation succession
  • Article

October 2024

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40 Reads

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1 Citation

ISME Communications

Haocai Wang

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Thomas W Crowther

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There is growing awareness of the need for regenerative practices in the fight against biodiversity loss and climate change. Yet, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how microbial community composition and functioning are likely to change alongside transition from high-density tillage to large-scale vegetation restoration. Here, we investigated the functional dynamics of microbial communities following a complete vegetation successional chronosequence in a subtropical zone, Southwestern China, using shotgun metagenomics approaches. The contents of total soil phosphorus (P), available P, litter P, and microbial biomass P decreased significantly during vegetation succession indicating that P is the most critical limiting nutrient. The abundance of genes related to P-uptake and transport, inorganic P-solubilization, organic P-mineralization, and P-starvation response regulation significantly increased with successional time, indicating an increased microbial “mining” for P under P limitation. Multi-analysis demonstrated microbial P limitation strongly inhibits carbon (C) catabolism potential, resulting in a significant decrease in CAZyme family gene abundances. Nevertheless, over successional time, microorganisms increased investment in genes involved in degradation-resistant compounds (lignin and its aromatic compounds) to acquire P resources in the litter. Our study provides functional gene-level insights into how P limitation during vegetation succession in subtropical regions inhibits soil microbial C metabolic processes, thereby advancing our understanding of belowground C cycling and microbial metabolic feedback during forest restoration.


Fig. 1. Agroforestry practices vary in their balance of the tree, animal, and temporary crop components
Fig. 2. Observed relationship between forest cover and yield changes across study sites. Boxplots showing
Fig. 3. Timeline of historical examples related to the emergence and removal of forests and their impacts on societies. This timeline highlights events in history where deforestation and environmental degradation
Protecting forests and trees is essential for global agricultural productivity
  • Preprint
  • File available

October 2024

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208 Reads

Balancing forest conservation and agricultural production is essential for a sustainable future. Here we review the scientific evidence for the relationships between forests and agricultural productivity across different scales, summarizing the contexts under which trees limit, maintain, or enhance agricultural productivity. While synergies and trade-offs occur at local scales, a regional-scale meta-analysis reveals mostly positive effects of forests and average national-level agricultural productivity is projected to decline once forest cover loss exceeds ~48%, with a 95% confidence interval [44, 50]. Given that 70% of countries have already reached or exceeded this threshold, implementing targeted forest conservation and restoration policies may be critical to optimize national food security. At a global scale, mass deforestation remains a key threat to international food production.

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Figure 1. Unusual climate anomalies in 2023 and 2024. Ocean temperatures (a, b) are presently far outside their historical ranges. These anomalies reflect the combined effect of long-term climate change and short-term variability. Sources and additional details about each variable are provided in supplemental file S1. Each line corresponds to a different year, with darker gray representing later years. All of the variables shown are daily estimates.
Figure 2. Timeseries of climate-related human activities. The data obtained since the publication of Ripple and colleagues (2023a) are shown in red (dark gray in black and white). In panel (f), tree cover loss does not account for forest gain and includes loss due to any cause. For panel (h), hydroelectricity and nuclear energy are shown in supplemental figure S3. Sources and additional details about each variable are provided in supplemental file S1.
Figure 3. Timeseries of climate-related responses. The data obtained before and after the publication of Ripple and colleagues (2023a) are shown in gray and red (dark gray in black and white), respectively. For area burned (m) and billion-dollar flood frequency (o) in the United States, the black horizontal lines show changepoint model estimates, which allow for abrupt shifts (see the supplement). For other variables with relatively high variability, local regression trendlines are shown in black. The variables were measured at various frequencies (e.g., annual, monthly, weekly). The labels on the x-axis correspond to midpoints of years. Billion-dollar flood frequency (o) is influenced by exposure and vulnerability in addition to climate change. Sources and additional details about each variable are provided in supplemental file S1.
Figure 4. Photograph series depicting the impacts of climate-related disasters. First row (left to right): Rescue of people stranded by floods in the city of Canoas, Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil, 2024; Duda Fortes, Agência RBS), “Drought in Ethiopia due to rains unrealised” (Ethiopia, 2011; Oxfam East Africa; CC BY 2.0). Second row: Firefighters contain a bushfire burning around the town of Aberdare (Australia, 2013; Quarrie Photography, Jeff Walsh, Cass Hodge; CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), The aftermath of Hurricane Matthew (Haiti, 2016; UN Photo/Logan Abassi; CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Third row: Inspection of a storm-damaged roadway in California (United States, 2023; Andrew Avitt/USDA Forest Service), Remnants of a house on Leyte island that was destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan (The Philippines, 2013; Trocaire/Wikimedia; CC BY 2.0). All quotes are from the Climate Visuals project (https://climatevisuals.org). See supplemental file S1 for details and more pictures.
Figure 5. Climate change spotlight topics. Already, many serious climate impacts are occurring, including coral bleaching (a) and permafrost thaw contributing to orange rivers with reduced fish abundance and drinking water quality (b). Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of scientific publications related to solar radiation modification (c). A survey of hundreds of IPCC senior authors and review editors indicates that the majority expect catastrophic warming of at least 2.5 degrees Celsius this century (d). Extreme heat is expected to disproportionately affect people in less wealthy countries that have lower emissions (e). Climate change could eventually contribute to societal collapse—a possibility that is increasingly being considered by researchers (f). See supplemental file S1 for data sources and details. Photographs: (a) Acropora/Wikimedia Commons, (b) Ken Hill/National Park Service.
The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth

October 2024

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2,264 Reads

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26 Citations

BioScience

Our aim in the present article is to communicate directly to researchers, policymakers, and the public. As scientists and academics, we feel it is our moral duty and that of our institutions to alert humanity to the growing threats that we face as clearly as possible and to show leadership in addressing them. In this report, we analyze the latest trends in a wide array of planetary vital signs. We also review notable recent climate-related disasters, spotlight important climate-related topics, and discuss needed policy interventions. This report is part of our series of concise annual updates on the state of the climate.


The pace of life for forest trees

October 2024

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1,073 Reads

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4 Citations

Science

Tree growth and longevity trade-offs fundamentally shape the terrestrial carbon balance. Yet, we lack a unified understanding of how such trade-offs vary across the world’s forests. By mapping life history traits for a wide range of species across the Americas, we reveal considerable variation in life expectancies from 10 centimeters in diameter (ranging from 1.3 to 3195 years) and show that the pace of life for trees can be accurately classified into four demographic functional types. We found emergent patterns in the strength of trade-offs between growth and longevity across a temperature gradient. Furthermore, we show that the diversity of life history traits varies predictably across forest biomes, giving rise to a positive relationship between trait diversity and productivity. Our pan-latitudinal assessment provides new insights into the demographic mechanisms that govern the carbon turnover rate across forest biomes.


Fig.1: Biophysical processes influenced by forests and their impacts on human wellbeing. (A) Illustration of processes. Red + refer to an increase in effect size when forests are present compared to non-forest, red -denote a decrease in effect size in the presence of forest. (B) Quantitative estimates of effect sizes.
The role of forests in global climate adaptation

September 2024

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406 Reads

Forests play a crucial role in regulating the global climate. Yet, forests also influence the local climate conditions through biophysical processes that directly impact human wellbeing. With growing policy emphasis on these climate adaptation effects, we review the scale dependent impacts of forests on climate conditions and their implications for human wellbeing. Generally, existing forests buffer local temperatures, with warming effects in cold regions and cooling effects in hot regions. At a global scale, trees are more conducive to cooling in regions where dense forests would naturally exist. Additionally, forests generally reduce water runoff, which can reduce flooding in wet areas, but it can also limit water availability downstream, especially in drier regions. Together, these findings suggest that climate positive tree effects tend to be most frequent in regions where forests naturally occur, and highlight the growing consensus around the importance of natural forests for climate adaptation.


Positive feedbacks and alternative stable states in forest leaf types

May 2024

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1,430 Reads

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2 Citations

The emergence of alternative stable states in forest systems has significant implications for the functioning and structure of the terrestrial biosphere, yet empirical evidence remains scarce. Here, we combine global forest biodiversity observations and simulations to test for alternative stable states in the presence of evergreen and deciduous forest types. We reveal a bimodal distribution of forest leaf types across temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere that cannot be explained by the environment alone, suggesting signatures of alternative forest states. Moreover, we empirically demonstrate the existence of positive feedbacks in tree growth, recruitment and mortality, with trees having 4–43% higher growth rates, 14–17% higher survival rates and 4–7 times higher recruitment rates when they are surrounded by trees of their own leaf type. Simulations show that the observed positive feedbacks are necessary and sufficient to generate alternative forest states, which also lead to dependency on history (hysteresis) during ecosystem transition from evergreen to deciduous forests and vice versa. We identify hotspots of bistable forest types in evergreen-deciduous ecotones, which are likely driven by soil-related positive feedbacks. These findings are integral to predicting the distribution of forest biomes, and aid to our understanding of biodiversity, carbon turnover, and terrestrial climate feedbacks.


The global distribution of tree carbon observations and the impact of human disturbances
a, Map of ground-sourced aboveground tree carbon observations (GFBI data; aggregated to 30-arcsec (1-km²) resolution). b, Satellite-derived ESA-CCI map of current aboveground tree carbon stocks (1-km resolution). c,f, Observed biome-level tree carbon densities in existing forests based on ground-sourced (c) and satellite-derived (f) data. d,g, Principal component analysis (top two principal components shown) of the eight human-activity variables either directly or indirectly reflecting human-caused forest disturbances or the lack thereof, such as land-use change, human modification, cultivated and managed vegetation and wilderness area, to detect the effect of human disturbance on tree carbon densities for the ground-sourced (d) and satellite-derived data (g). e,h, Partial regression of the global variation in forest carbon density along the human-disturbance gradient (represented by the first principal component of the eight human-activity variables; see panels d and g) for the ground-sourced (e) and satellite-derived data (h), controlling for 40 environmental covariates. Relative carbon density is the observed carbon density divided by the global average.
The natural tree carbon potential under current climate conditions in the absence of humans
a,b, The total living tree carbon potential of 600 Gt C within the natural canopy cover area of 4.4 billion ha². c,d, The differences between current and potential tree carbon stocks, totalling 217 Gt C. e,f, The difference of tree carbon potential between the GS and SD models, subtracting the mean values of the six SD models from the mean values of the four GS models. Blue colours indicate that the GS models predict higher potential than the SD models, whereas red colours indicate the opposite. b,d,f, Latitudinal distributions (mean ± standard deviation) of the total tree carbon potential for the GS1, GS2, SD1 and SD2 models (b), the difference between current and potential tree carbon (d) and the difference of tree carbon potential between the GS and SD models (f). Maps represent the average estimates across all GS and SD models and are projected at 30-arcsec (about 1-km²) resolution. We show dryland and savannah biomes with stripes to denote that many of these areas are not appropriate for forest restoration. Where trees would naturally exist, they often exist far below 100% canopy cover, and restoration of forest cover should be limited to natural conditions.
The living tree carbon potential estimated from the ground-sourced (GS1 and GS2) and satellite-derived (SD1 and SD2) models
a, Total estimated living tree biomass potential of the GS1, GS2, SD1 and SD2 models. Error bars represent the lower and upper boundaries based on the 5% and 95% quantiles from a bootstrapping procedure. Colours represent the different input datasets, that is, upper or lower canopy cover boundaries (GS models) and ESA-CCI, Walker et al.² or harmonized (SD models). Light colours above white lines indicate the difference between current and potential tree carbon stocks. b, Meta-analysis showing literature estimates of living tree carbon potential based on ensemble models4,53,54, inventory data19,55–61 and mechanistic62–67 or data-driven² models. The horizontal dashed line represents the average existing living tree carbon of 443 Gt C estimated in these publications. c, Differences between current and potential tree carbon stocks. d, Literature estimates for the difference between current and potential tree carbon stocks from ref. ⁴ (ensemble models), refs. 1,53,58,61 (inventory data), refs. 63,64 (mechanistic models) and ref. ² (data-driven models).
Sources of uncertainty in forest carbon potential for the GS and SD models
a,b, Relative contribution of individual uncertainty sources to the overall uncertainty in carbon potential for the GS (a) and SD (b) models: (1) model approach (type 1 versus type 2 models); (2) input data (current aboveground tree carbon input, that is, upper and lower canopy cover boundaries for GS models and ESA-CCI, Walker et al.² and harmonized for SD models); (3) aboveground biomass potential estimates (bootstrapping); (4) belowground biomass (accounting for uncertainties in both root mass fraction and aboveground biomass); (5) dead wood and litter (accounting for uncertainties in both dead wood and litter-to-tree biomass ratios and tree biomass); and (6) soil organic carbon potential²³. The maps show the top uncertainty source within each pixel. The pie charts show the relative contribution of uncertainties worldwide.
Contribution of land-use types, forest types, carbon pools and countries to the difference between current and potential ecosystem-level carbon stocks
a, Of the 328 Gt C discrepancy between current and potential carbon stocks, 226 Gt C is found outside urban and agricultural (cropland and pasture) areas, with 61% in forested regions in which the recovery of degraded ecosystems can promote carbon capture (conservation potential) and 39% in regions in which forests have been removed (restoration potential). b, Relative contribution of forest degradation (conservation potential; blue area) and land-cover change (orange colours) to the difference between current and potential ecosystem-level carbon stocks. The darker blue area represents the conservation potential of 10.5 Gt C in forest plantation regions. c, Relative contribution of tropical, temperate, boreal and dryland forests to the total forest conservation potential. d, Relative contribution of the three main carbon pools (living biomass, dead wood and litter, and soil) to the difference between current and potential carbon stocks. e, The nine countries contributing more than 50% to the difference between current and potential carbon stocks.
Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential

November 2023

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4,665 Reads

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144 Citations

Nature

Forests are a substantial terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system¹. Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon losses from global forests2–5 are characterized by considerable uncertainty and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these estimates. Here we combine several ground-sourced⁶ and satellite-derived approaches2,7,8 to evaluate the scale of the global forest carbon potential outside agricultural and urban lands. Despite regional variation, the predictions demonstrated remarkable consistency at a global scale, with only a 12% difference between the ground-sourced and satellite-derived estimates. At present, global forest carbon storage is markedly under the natural potential, with a total deficit of 226 Gt (model range = 151–363 Gt) in areas with low human footprint. Most (61%, 139 Gt C) of this potential is in areas with existing forests, in which ecosystem protection can allow forests to recover to maturity. The remaining 39% (87 Gt C) of potential lies in regions in which forests have been removed or fragmented. Although forests cannot be a substitute for emissions reductions, our results support the idea2,3,9 that the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of diverse forests offer valuable contributions to meeting global climate and biodiversity targets.


Warming and nitrogen addition alter flowering phenology and plant community composition in a desert steppe

November 2023

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177 Reads

The strong control of temperature on the timing of plant phenology is expected to cause substantial shifts in flowering times under climate change. Yet, the sensitivity of flowering phenology in dryland regions to climate change, and the potential implications for community composition, remain largely unexplored. Here, we investigate the effects of climate warming and nitrogen addition on flowering phenology of four C3 plants and two C4 plants and explore cascading effects on shifts in C3 vs C4 plant dominance in a 17-year field experiment in a desert steppe. Across the last 10 years of the experiment (2013–2022), we found that warming had a greater effect on phenological shifts in C3 than in C4 plants. Warming significantly advanced the flowering time of C3 plants by 4.3 ± 0.1 days and of C4 plants by 2.8 ± 0.1 days. Warming also reduced the duration of flowering by 1.8 ± 0.1 days and decreased the dominance of C3 plants compared to C4 plants (P<0.05). Nitrogen addition extended the duration of flowering of C4 plants by 3.4 ± 0.2 days and increased their relative dominance, while having no effect on C3 plants. Structural equation models highlighted that these phenological responses were influenced by soil temperature and soil water availability. Our results show the divergent phenological responses between C3 and C4 plants under global changes, predicting shifts in dominance between these plant types in temperate dryland ecosystems.


Figure 2. SEED biocomplexity index. Example visualization of the SEED framework for an area of interest, showing the dimensionality-reduced values across 3 axes for each of the 3 scales of variation (genetic, species, and ecosystems). For each axis, the visualization shows the difference between the current state (yellow), and the potential natural state based on a comparable, minimallydisturbed ecosystem (white). The distance between the current and potential measures creates a score -the SEED biocomplexity index -which ranges from 0 and 1, where 0 represents a complete absence of biocomplexity, and 1 represents an area that is equivalent in complexity to its potential natural state. Arrows indicate the relationships between the three scales of variation and the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs).
Figure 3. Assessing the potential state of ecosystems through the identification of relevant reference areas. a) and b) Reference areas representing the 5% least disturbed areas within each combination of ecoregion and land cover type. c) Potential land cover obtained from 62 , substituting artificial ecosystems with the potential layer from the same study. The artificial class is composed of plantations, arable land, pasture, urban areas and rural gardens. d) Potential land cover types at a local scale in Gabon, indicating which reference areas from (b) are used to calculate biodiversity values for those areas. e) Ecosystem structural integrity, obtained by comparing ecosystems with their reference. Structural components include canopy height, homogeneity, LAI, and forest cover, above-ground and below-ground biomass. f) Violin plots of SEED structural absolute values and integrity across different land-use categories.
Figure 4. Comparative analysis of the SEED Index. a) Global representation of the SEED index. b) Comparisons between the SEED index and MSA (left) or BII (right). c) The SEED index in the country of Gabon and surrounding areas. d) SEED index densities across six land cover classes in Gabon. The artificial class is composed of plantations, arable land, pasture, urban areas and rural gardens.
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Assessing the multidimensional complexity of biodiversity using a globally standardized approach

August 2023

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1,730 Reads

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1 Citation

Quantifying biodiversity across the globe is critical for transparent reporting and assessment under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Understanding the full complexity of biodiversity requires consideration of the variation of life across genetic, species and ecosystem levels. Achieving this in a globally-standardized way remains a key international challenge for biodiversity monitoring efforts. Here, we present the Sustainable Ecology and Economic Development (SEED) framework, which consolidates multiple dimensions of biodiversity into a single measure of biocomplexity as a holistic estimate of the current state of nature at a given location. The SEED framework continuously integrates state-of-the-art datasets and maps of the biological variation in plants, microbes, animals, and ecosystems to estimate the local biocomplexity across the planet relative to a comparable, minimally-disturbed ‘reference’ ecosystem. The SEED framework allows an assessment of ecological health in response to positive and negative human impacts, and informs decision makers who strive to improve the global state of nature.


Frugivores enhance potential carbon recovery in fragmented tropical landscapes

August 2023

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81 Reads

Forest restoration is fundamental to overcoming biodiversity crises and climate change. However, restoration success remains challenging. In tropical forests, animals can improve forest recovery as they disperse > 70% of tree species. Until now, representing animals in restoration and climate change policies remains challenging because we lack a quantitative assessment of their contribution to forest and carbon recovery. Here, we used individual-based models to assess frugivore-mediated seed rain in open areas along a fragmentation gradient. Movements of large birds were limited in landscapes with > 40% forest cover, although small birds continued to disperse seeds. Large birds disperse seeds from late-successional species with higher carbon-storage potential. Therefore, their restricted movement reduced by 35% the potential carbon that can be absorbed. Maintaining forest cover > 40% is essential to optimize animals' contribution to restoration success. In contrast, active restoration (e.g., planting trees) is required in fragmented landscapes to achieve carbon and biodiversity targets.


Citations (20)


... In the current times of worsening climate change, more extreme environmental events, and increasing biodiversity loss, among other ecological challenges, humanity needs as many people as possible to understand and use ecological science, especially regarding its applications to environmental management and policy development (Ripple et al. 2024). Ensuring that future societies and workforces are better positioned to address social-ecological challenges, particularly those related to environmental injustices and inequalities, should be a central goal for ecology education (Johnson and Mappin 2005, Lewinsohn et al. 2015, Martusewicz et al. 2020, Kellogg 2023. ...

Reference:

Diversifying Ecology Education for Everyone Through More Inclusive, Interdisciplinary, and Accessible Teaching
The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth

BioScience

... These areas are essential for storing carbon and protecting biodiversity hotspots worldwide. The highest carbon stored in forests worldwide is in tropical forests, followed by temperate, boreal, and dryland zones (Mo et al., 2023). However, deforestation, land-use changes, and forest degradation pose a severe threat to these ecosystems because they alter carbon cycles and increase carbon emissions (Kumar et al., 2022;Olorunfemi et al., 2022). ...

Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential

Nature

... Globally, aggregated metrics are often difficult to understand or relate to, but disaggregation can allow stakeholders to understand policy targets relating to both national and international commitments. Many metrics, however-such as MSA and the Sustainable Ecology and Economic Development frameworl(SEED) [15,17]-are not readily disaggregated, as species identity is not retained through computation. (4) Finally, to be useful in guiding real-world actions that vary in area, it is important that biodiversity metrics provide information that is scalable without the need for extensive additional analysis. ...

Assessing the multidimensional complexity of biodiversity using a globally standardized approach

... Therefore, ecosystems can regenerate their carbon storage potential in areas where animals are diverse and can move across the landscape into restoration sites. In fact, it has been estimated that animals' contribution to seed rain in areas to be restored can increase by 35% of the carbon stock potential of the regenerating forest when animals can move freely in the surrounding landscape (Bello et al., 2023). Conversely, restoration projects may fail to naturally regenerate their carbon sequestration potential in defaunated landscapes or where animals face movement limitations due to forest fragmentation (Bello et al., 2023;De la Peña-Domene et al., 2016). ...

THE ROLE OF FRUGIVORES TRAITS AND MOVEMENTS IN FOREST RESTORATION IN FRAGMENTED LANDSCAPES
  • Citing Preprint
  • July 2023

... In this study, we focused on species richness as a main proxy for species diversity. Yet, it is worth mentioning that other facets of diversity may be impactful on DPRs, such as species evenness (Hordijk et al., 2023). We also added a 'country' effect in the statistical model to take into account differences in sampling design (Table A). ...

Evenness mediates the global relationship between forest productivity and richness

... It was assumed that the bacteria may improve root colonisation by AMF,plant biomass yield was often related with high root colonisation by AMF [14,45]. Other reports, however, did not show such a relationship [19,30]. Here, supplementation with bacteria did not affect root colonisation by AMF (data not shown). ...

Macroevolutionary decline in mycorrhizal colonization and chemical defence responsiveness to mycorrhization

iScience

... This debate is particularly important in the context of the tree flora of the wet tropics, as up to 53,000 of the global total of ca. 73,000 tree species occur in old-growth, closed-canopy wet tropical forests [7][8][9] . ...

The number of tree species on Earth

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

... These results suggest that a shift in community abundance and community composition likely modulates the strength of the temperature response of SOC decomposition in various ways. Our findings can thus inform the structural assumptions of soil biogeochemical models that attempt to explicitly represent the microbial abundance and community composition that exert control over soil C turnover (Wan and Crowther 2022;Wieder, Bonan, and Allison 2013;Zhang et al. 2022), and may therefore help build confidence in soil C-climate feedback projections. The strong indirect effects of physicochemical protection and substrate on Q 10 , together with the fact that measurements of physicochemical protection and substrate are usually easier than microbial traits, incorporating physicochemical protection and substrate might still be more effective in process-based models for soil C-climate feedback predictions. ...

Uniting the scales of microbial biogeochemistry with trait‐based modelling

... From gut microbiota to grassland plants, constant abundances over decades are signatures of global stability [1][2][3]. Some natural communities, however, may display alternative stable states [4][5][6][7][8][9], leading to the possibility of becoming "stuck" in undesirable states associated with disease or poor community function [5]. Communities have also been observed to display persistent fluctuations in species abundance, including limit cycles [10][11][12] and chaos [13][14][15][16]. ...

Alternative stable states of the forest mycobiome are maintained through positive feedbacks

Nature Ecology & Evolution

... However, the roots of most (>80%) grassland plants are colonized by endogenous microbes, in particular arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF; Li et al., 2015;Horsch et al., 2023;B. Wang & Qiu, 2006), whose residues (i.e., necromass), attached to or buried inside root tissues, may enter and contribute to SOC upon root death (Braghiere et al., 2021;Frey, 2019;Horsch et al., 2023). Previous studies have found that AMF may generate organic binding reagents, facilitating aggregate development as well as SOC formation and stabilization (Frey, 2019;Wu et al., 2024). ...

Mycorrhizal Distributions Impact Global Patterns of Carbon and Nutrient Cycling