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Evolutionary constraints on species diversity in marine bacterioplankton communities.

ABSTRACT: Variation in microbial species diversity has typically been explained as the outcome of local ecological factors driving species coexistence, overlooking the roles of evolutionary constraints. Here, we argue that macro-evolutionary niche conservatism and unequal diversification rates among phylum-level lineages are strong determinants of diversity-environment relationships in bacterial systems. That is, apart from stochasticity, environmental effects operate most strongly on phylum composition, which in turn dictates the species diversity of bacterial communities. This concept is demonstrated using bacterioplankton in the surface seawaters of the East China Sea. Furthermore, we show that the species richness of a local bacterioplankton community can generally be estimated based on the relative abundances of phyla and their contributions of species numbers in the global seawater pool-highlighting the important influence of evolutionary constraints on local community diversity.

SUBMITTER: Lu HP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6462047 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Evolutionary constraints on species diversity in marine bacterioplankton communities.

Lu Hsiao-Pei HP Yeh Yi-Chun YC Shiah Fuh-Kwo FK Gong Gwo-Ching GC Hsieh Chih-Hao CH

The ISME journal 20190103 4

Variation in microbial species diversity has typically been explained as the outcome of local ecological factors driving species coexistence, overlooking the roles of evolutionary constraints. Here, we argue that macro-evolutionary niche conservatism and unequal diversification rates among phylum-level lineages are strong determinants of diversity-environment relationships in bacterial systems. That is, apart from stochasticity, environmental effects operate most strongly on phylum composition, ...[more]

PMID: 30607025

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Project description:The presence of more species in the community of a sampling site (α diversity) typically increases ecosystem functions via nonrandom processes like resource partitioning. When considering multiple communities, we hypothesize that higher compositional difference (β diversity) increases overall functions of these communities. Further, we hypothesize that the β diversity effect is more positive when β diversity is increased by nonrandom assembly processes. To test these hypotheses, we collected bacterioplankton along a transect of 6 sampling sites in the southern East China Sea in 14 cruises. For any pairs of the 6 sites within a cruise, we calculated the Bray-Curtis index to represent β diversity and summed bacterial biomass as a proxy to indicate the overall function of the two communities. We then calculated deviation of observed mean pairwise phylogenetic similarities among species in two communities from random to represent the influences of nonrandom processes. The bacterial β diversity was found to positively affect the summed bacterial biomass; however, the effect varied among cruises. Cross-cruise comparison indicated that the β diversity effect increased with the nonrandom processes selecting for phylogenetically dissimilar species. This study extends biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research to the scale of multiple sites and enriches the framework by considering community assembly processes. IMPORTANCE The implications of our analyses are twofold. First, we emphasize the importance of studying β diversity. We expanded the current biodiversity-ecosystem functioning framework from single to multiple sampling sites and investigated the influences of species compositional differences among sites on the overall functioning of these sites. Since natural ecological communities never exist alone, our analyses allow us to more holistically perceive the role of biodiversity in natural ecosystems. Second, we took community assembly processes into account to attain a more mechanistic understanding of the impacts of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning.

Dataset Information

Evolutionary constraints on species diversity in marine bacterioplankton communities.

Publications

Evolutionary constraints on species diversity in marine bacterioplankton communities.

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