ORCID Profile
0000-0002-2973-3860
Current Organisation
Booz Allen Hamilton Inc
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 20-11-2017
DOI: 10.1038/S41564-017-0062-X
Abstract: The emergence of high-throughput DNA sequencing methods provides unprecedented opportunities to further unravel bacterial bio ersity and its worldwide role from human health to ecosystem functioning. However, despite the abundance of sequencing studies, combining data from multiple in idual studies to address macroecological questions of bacterial ersity remains methodically challenging and plagued with biases. Here, using a machine-learning approach that accounts for differences among studies and complex interactions among taxa, we merge 30 independent bacterial data sets comprising 1,998 soil s les from 21 countries. Whereas previous meta-analysis efforts have focused on bacterial ersity measures or abundances of major taxa, we show that disparate licon sequence data can be combined at the taxonomy-based level to assess bacterial community structure. We find that rarer taxa are more important for structuring soil communities than abundant taxa, and that these rarer taxa are better predictors of community structure than environmental factors, which are often confounded across studies. We conclude that combining data from independent studies can be used to explore bacterial community dynamics, identify potential 'indicator' taxa with an important role in structuring communities, and propose hypotheses on the factors that shape bacterial biogeography that have been overlooked in the past.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 03-03-2021
Abstract: Disturbances fundamentally alter ecosystem functions, yet predicting their impacts remains a key scientific challenge. While the study of disturbances is ubiquitous across many ecological disciplines, there is no agreed-upon, cross-disciplinary foundation for discussing or quantifying the complexity of disturbances, and no consistent terminology or methodologies exist. This inconsistency presents an increasingly urgent challenge due to accelerating global change and the threat of interacting disturbances that can destabilize ecosystem responses. By harvesting the expertise of an interdisciplinary cohort of contributors spanning 42 institutions across 15 countries, we identified an essential limitation in disturbance ecology: the word ‘disturbance’ is used interchangeably to refer to both the events that cause, and the consequences of, ecological change, despite fundamental distinctions between the two meanings. In response, we developed a generalizable framework of ecosystem disturbances, providing a well-defined lexicon for understanding disturbances across perspectives and scales. The framework results from ideas that resonate across multiple scientific disciplines and provides a baseline standard to compare disturbances across fields. This framework can be supplemented by discipline-specific variables to provide maximum benefit to both inter- and intra-disciplinary research. To support future syntheses and meta-analyses of disturbance research, we also encourage researchers to be explicit in how they define disturbance drivers and impacts, and we recommend minimum reporting standards that are applicable regardless of scale. Finally, we discuss the primary factors we considered when developing a baseline framework and propose four future directions to advance our interdisciplinary understanding of disturbances and their social-ecological impacts: integrating across ecological scales, understanding disturbance interactions, establishing baselines and trajectories, and developing process-based models and ecological forecasting initiatives. Our experience through this process motivates us to encourage the wider scientific community to continue to explore new approaches for leveraging Open Science principles in generating creative and multidisciplinary ideas.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-10-2013
DOI: 10.1111/NPH.12531
Abstract: As a consequence of the tight linkages among soils, plants and microbes inhabiting the rhizosphere, we hypothesized that soil nutrient and microbial stoichiometry would differ among plant species and be correlated within plant rhizospheres. We assessed plant tissue carbon (C) : nitrogen (N) : phosphorus (P) ratios for eight species representing four different plant functional groups in a semiarid grassland during near‐peak biomass. Using intact plant species‐specific rhizospheres, we examined soil C : N : P, microbial biomass C : N, and soil enzyme C : N : P nutrient acquisition activities. We found that few of the plant species' rhizospheres demonstrated distinct stoichiometric properties from other plant species and unvegetated soil. Plant tissue nutrient ratios and components of below‐ground rhizosphere stoichiometry predominantly differed between the C 4 plant species Buchloe dactyloides and the legume Astragalus laxmannii . The rhizospheres under the C 4 grass B. dactyloides exhibited relatively higher microbial C and lower soil N, indicative of distinct soil organic matter ( SOM ) decomposition and nutrient mineralization activities. Assessing the ecological stoichiometry among plant species' rhizospheres is a high‐resolution tool useful for linking plant community composition to below‐ground soil microbial and nutrient characteristics. By identifying how rhizospheres differ among plant species, we can better assess how plant–microbial interactions associated with ecosystem‐level processes may be influenced by plant community shifts.
No related grants have been discovered for Jennifer Rocca.