Initial community evenness favours functionality under selective stress

Lieven Wittebolle, Massimo Marzorati, Lieven Clement, Annalisa Balloi, Daniele Daffonchio, Kim Heylen, Paul De Vos, Willy Verstraete and Nico Boon ()
Additional contact information
Lieven Wittebolle: LabMET, Laboratory of Microbial Ecology & Technology,
Massimo Marzorati: LabMET, Laboratory of Microbial Ecology & Technology,
Lieven Clement: BIOSTAT, Biometrics and Process Control
Annalisa Balloi: DISTAM, Università degli Studi di Milano
Daniele Daffonchio: DISTAM, Università degli Studi di Milano
Kim Heylen: LM-UGent, Laboratory of Microbiology, Physiology and Microbiology, Ghent University, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium
Paul De Vos: LM-UGent, Laboratory of Microbiology, Physiology and Microbiology, Ghent University, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium
Willy Verstraete: LabMET, Laboratory of Microbial Ecology & Technology,
Nico Boon: LabMET, Laboratory of Microbial Ecology & Technology,

Nature, 2009, vol. 458, issue 7238, 623-626

Abstract: Ecosystem resilience: safety in species evenness It has been established that ecosystem functioning is affected by species richness, but the effect of inequalities in the relative abundances of these species — species unevenness — is less well studied. An investigation of the effect of initial species evenness in more than a thousand microbial microcosms, each containing 18 denitrifying species, now suggests that the more uneven an ecosystem is, the more sensitive it is to environmental stress. The stability of net ecosystem denitrification in the event of salinity stress was greater for communities that started life with high species evenness than for those in which there was extreme dominance by one or a few species.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature07840

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