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Biodiversity-function relationships in methanogenic communities
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Sierocinski, Pawel, Bayer, Florian, Yvon-Durocher, Gabriel, Burdon, Melia, Großkopf, Tobias, Alston, Mark, Swarbreck, David, Hobbs, Phil J., Soyer, Orkun S. and Buckling, Angus (2018) Biodiversity-function relationships in methanogenic communities. Molecular Ecology, 27 (22). pp. 4641-4651. doi:10.1111/mec.14895 ISSN 0962-1083.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mec.14895
Abstract
Methanogenic communities play a crucial role in carbon cycling and biotechnology (anaerobic digestion), but our understanding of how their diversity, or composition in general, determines the rate of methane production is very limited. Studies to date have been correlational because of the difficulty in cultivating their constituent species in pure culture. Here, we investigate the causal link between methanogenesis and diversity in laboratory anaerobic digesters by experimentally manipulating the diversity of cultures by dilution and subsequent equilibration of biomass. This process necessarily leads to the loss of the rarer species from communities. We find a positive relationship between methane production and the number of taxa, with little evidence of functional saturation, suggesting that rare species play an important role in methane‐producing communities. No correlations were found between the initial composition and methane production across natural communities, but a positive relationship between species richness and methane production emerged following ecological selection imposed by the laboratory conditions. Our data suggest methanogenic communities show little functional redundancy, and hence, any loss of diversity—both natural and resulting from changes in propagation conditions during anaerobic digestion—is likely to reduce methane production.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | Q Science > QR Microbiology | ||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Life Sciences (2010- ) | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Microbial diversity, Methane | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Molecular Ecology | ||||||
Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. | ||||||
ISSN: | 0962-1083 | ||||||
Official Date: | 11 October 2018 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 27 | ||||||
Number: | 22 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 4641-4651 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1111/mec.14895 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 14 December 2018 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 17 December 2018 | ||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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