The Experts below are selected from a list of 69 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Jeff Gore - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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community structure follows simple Assembly Rules in microbial microcosms
Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2017Co-Authors: Jonathan Friedman, Logan M Higgins, Jeff GoreAbstract:Microorganisms typically form diverse communities of interacting species, whose activities have tremendous impact on the plants, animals and humans they associate with. The ability to predict the structure of these complex communities is crucial to understanding and managing them. Here, we propose a simple, qualitative Assembly Rule that predicts community structure from the outcomes of competitions between small sets of species, and experimentally assess its predictive power using synthetic microbial communities composed of up to eight soil bacterial species. Nearly all competitions resulted in a unique, stable community, whose composition was independent of the initial species fractions. Survival in three-species competitions was predicted by the pairwise outcomes with an accuracy of ~90%. Obtaining a similar level of accuracy in competitions between sets of seven or all eight species required incorporating additional information regarding the outcomes of the three-species competitions. Our results demonstrate experimentally the ability of a simple bottom-up approach to predict community structure. Such an approach is key for anticipating the response of communities to changing environments, designing interventions to steer existing communities to more desirable states and, ultimately, rationally designing communities de novo.
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community structure follows simple Assembly Rules in microbial microcosms
bioRxiv, 2016Co-Authors: Jonathan Friedman, Logan M Higgins, Jeff GoreAbstract:Microbes typically form diverse communities of interacting species, whose activities have tremendous impact on the plants, animals, and humans they associate with, as well as on the biogeochemistry of the entire planet. The ability to predict the structure of these complex communities is crucial to understanding, managing, and utilizing them. Here, we propose a simple, qualitative Assembly Rule that predicts community structure from the outcomes of competitions between small sets of species, and experimentally assess its predictive power using synthetic microbial communities. The Rule9s accuracy was evaluated by competing combinations of up to eight soil bacterial species, and comparing the experimentally observed outcomes to the predicted ones. Nearly all competitions resulted in a unique, stable community, whose composition was independent of the initial species fractions. Survival in three-species competitions was predicted by the pairwise outcomes with an accuracy of ~90%. Obtaining a similar level of accuracy in competitions between sets of seven or all eight species required incorporating additional information regarding the outcomes of the three-species competitions. Our results demonstrate experimentally the ability of a simple bottom-up approach to predict community structure. Such an approach is key for anticipating the response of communities to changing environments, designing interventions to steer existing communities to more desirable states, and, ultimately, rationally designing communities de novo.
Jonathan Friedman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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community structure follows simple Assembly Rules in microbial microcosms
Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2017Co-Authors: Jonathan Friedman, Logan M Higgins, Jeff GoreAbstract:Microorganisms typically form diverse communities of interacting species, whose activities have tremendous impact on the plants, animals and humans they associate with. The ability to predict the structure of these complex communities is crucial to understanding and managing them. Here, we propose a simple, qualitative Assembly Rule that predicts community structure from the outcomes of competitions between small sets of species, and experimentally assess its predictive power using synthetic microbial communities composed of up to eight soil bacterial species. Nearly all competitions resulted in a unique, stable community, whose composition was independent of the initial species fractions. Survival in three-species competitions was predicted by the pairwise outcomes with an accuracy of ~90%. Obtaining a similar level of accuracy in competitions between sets of seven or all eight species required incorporating additional information regarding the outcomes of the three-species competitions. Our results demonstrate experimentally the ability of a simple bottom-up approach to predict community structure. Such an approach is key for anticipating the response of communities to changing environments, designing interventions to steer existing communities to more desirable states and, ultimately, rationally designing communities de novo.
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community structure follows simple Assembly Rules in microbial microcosms
bioRxiv, 2016Co-Authors: Jonathan Friedman, Logan M Higgins, Jeff GoreAbstract:Microbes typically form diverse communities of interacting species, whose activities have tremendous impact on the plants, animals, and humans they associate with, as well as on the biogeochemistry of the entire planet. The ability to predict the structure of these complex communities is crucial to understanding, managing, and utilizing them. Here, we propose a simple, qualitative Assembly Rule that predicts community structure from the outcomes of competitions between small sets of species, and experimentally assess its predictive power using synthetic microbial communities. The Rule9s accuracy was evaluated by competing combinations of up to eight soil bacterial species, and comparing the experimentally observed outcomes to the predicted ones. Nearly all competitions resulted in a unique, stable community, whose composition was independent of the initial species fractions. Survival in three-species competitions was predicted by the pairwise outcomes with an accuracy of ~90%. Obtaining a similar level of accuracy in competitions between sets of seven or all eight species required incorporating additional information regarding the outcomes of the three-species competitions. Our results demonstrate experimentally the ability of a simple bottom-up approach to predict community structure. Such an approach is key for anticipating the response of communities to changing environments, designing interventions to steer existing communities to more desirable states, and, ultimately, rationally designing communities de novo.
Logan M Higgins - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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community structure follows simple Assembly Rules in microbial microcosms
Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2017Co-Authors: Jonathan Friedman, Logan M Higgins, Jeff GoreAbstract:Microorganisms typically form diverse communities of interacting species, whose activities have tremendous impact on the plants, animals and humans they associate with. The ability to predict the structure of these complex communities is crucial to understanding and managing them. Here, we propose a simple, qualitative Assembly Rule that predicts community structure from the outcomes of competitions between small sets of species, and experimentally assess its predictive power using synthetic microbial communities composed of up to eight soil bacterial species. Nearly all competitions resulted in a unique, stable community, whose composition was independent of the initial species fractions. Survival in three-species competitions was predicted by the pairwise outcomes with an accuracy of ~90%. Obtaining a similar level of accuracy in competitions between sets of seven or all eight species required incorporating additional information regarding the outcomes of the three-species competitions. Our results demonstrate experimentally the ability of a simple bottom-up approach to predict community structure. Such an approach is key for anticipating the response of communities to changing environments, designing interventions to steer existing communities to more desirable states and, ultimately, rationally designing communities de novo.
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community structure follows simple Assembly Rules in microbial microcosms
bioRxiv, 2016Co-Authors: Jonathan Friedman, Logan M Higgins, Jeff GoreAbstract:Microbes typically form diverse communities of interacting species, whose activities have tremendous impact on the plants, animals, and humans they associate with, as well as on the biogeochemistry of the entire planet. The ability to predict the structure of these complex communities is crucial to understanding, managing, and utilizing them. Here, we propose a simple, qualitative Assembly Rule that predicts community structure from the outcomes of competitions between small sets of species, and experimentally assess its predictive power using synthetic microbial communities. The Rule9s accuracy was evaluated by competing combinations of up to eight soil bacterial species, and comparing the experimentally observed outcomes to the predicted ones. Nearly all competitions resulted in a unique, stable community, whose composition was independent of the initial species fractions. Survival in three-species competitions was predicted by the pairwise outcomes with an accuracy of ~90%. Obtaining a similar level of accuracy in competitions between sets of seven or all eight species required incorporating additional information regarding the outcomes of the three-species competitions. Our results demonstrate experimentally the ability of a simple bottom-up approach to predict community structure. Such an approach is key for anticipating the response of communities to changing environments, designing interventions to steer existing communities to more desirable states, and, ultimately, rationally designing communities de novo.
Bela Tothmeresz - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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conversion from environmental filtering to randomness as Assembly Rule of ground beetle assemblages along an urbanization gradient
Scientific Reports, 2018Co-Authors: Tibor Magura, Gabor L Lovei, Bela TothmereszAbstract:Urbanization fragments, isolates or eliminates natural habitats, and changes the structure and composition of assemblages living in the remaining natural fragments. Knowing Assembly Rules is necessary to support and/or maintain biodiversity in urban habitats. We hypothesized that forest communities in rural sites are organized by environmental filtering, but this may be changed by urbanization, and in the suburban and urban forest fragments replaced by randomly organized assemblages, influenced by the colonization of species from the surrounding matrix. Evaluating simultaneously the functional and phylogenetic relationships of co-existing species, we showed that at the rural sites, co-existing ground beetle species were functionally and phylogenetically more similar than expected by chance, indicating that environmental filtering was the likely process structuring these communities. Contrary to this, in urban and suburban sites, the co-occurring species were functionally and phylogenetically not different from the null model, indicating randomly structured assemblages. According to our findings, changes in environmental and habitat characteristics accompanied by urbanization lead to assemblages of randomly colonized species from the surrounding matrix, threatening proper ecosystem functioning. To reassemble stochastically assembled species of urban and suburban fragments to structured, properly functioning communities, appropriate management strategies are needed which simultaneously consider recreational, economic and conservation criteria.
Tibor Magura - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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environmental filtering is the main Assembly Rule of ground beetles in the forest and its edge but not in the adjacent grassland
Insect Science, 2019Co-Authors: Tibor Magura, Gabor L LoveiAbstract:In a fragmented landscape, transitional zones between neighbouring habitats are common, and our understanding of community organisational forces across such habitats is important. Edge studies are numerous, but the majority of them utilise information on species richness and abundance. Abundance and taxonomic diversity, however, provide little information on the functioning and phylogeny of the co-existing species. Combining the evaluation of their functional and phylogenetic relationships, we aimed to assess whether ground beetle assemblages are deterministically or stochastically structured along grassland-forest gradients. Our results showed different community Assembly Rules on opposite sides of the forest edge. In the grassland, co-occurring species were functionally and phylogenetically not different from the random null model, indicating a random Assembly process. Contrary to this, at the forest edge and the interior, co-occurring species showed functional and phylogenetic clustering, thus environmental filtering was the likely process structuring carabid assemblages. Community Assembly in the grassland was considerably affected by asymmetrical species flows (spillover) across the forest edge: more forest species penetrated into the grassland than open-habitat and generalist species entered into the forest. This asymmetrical species flow underlines the importance of the filter function of forest edges. As unfavourable, human-induced changes to the structure, composition and characteristics of forest edges may alter their filter function, edges have to be specifically considered during conservation management. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
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conversion from environmental filtering to randomness as Assembly Rule of ground beetle assemblages along an urbanization gradient
Scientific Reports, 2018Co-Authors: Tibor Magura, Gabor L Lovei, Bela TothmereszAbstract:Urbanization fragments, isolates or eliminates natural habitats, and changes the structure and composition of assemblages living in the remaining natural fragments. Knowing Assembly Rules is necessary to support and/or maintain biodiversity in urban habitats. We hypothesized that forest communities in rural sites are organized by environmental filtering, but this may be changed by urbanization, and in the suburban and urban forest fragments replaced by randomly organized assemblages, influenced by the colonization of species from the surrounding matrix. Evaluating simultaneously the functional and phylogenetic relationships of co-existing species, we showed that at the rural sites, co-existing ground beetle species were functionally and phylogenetically more similar than expected by chance, indicating that environmental filtering was the likely process structuring these communities. Contrary to this, in urban and suburban sites, the co-occurring species were functionally and phylogenetically not different from the null model, indicating randomly structured assemblages. According to our findings, changes in environmental and habitat characteristics accompanied by urbanization lead to assemblages of randomly colonized species from the surrounding matrix, threatening proper ecosystem functioning. To reassemble stochastically assembled species of urban and suburban fragments to structured, properly functioning communities, appropriate management strategies are needed which simultaneously consider recreational, economic and conservation criteria.
