Publication Date:
2002-10-19
Description:
Human impacts, including global change, may alter the composition of soil faunal communities, but consequences for ecosystem functioning are poorly understood. We constructed model grassland systems in the Ecotron controlled environment facility and manipulated soil community composition through assemblages of different animal body sizes. Plant community composition, microbial and root biomass, decomposition rate, and mycorrhizal colonization were all markedly affected. However, two key ecosystem processes, aboveground net primary productivity and net ecosystem productivity, were surprisingly resistant to these changes. We hypothesize that positive and negative faunal-mediated effects in soil communities cancel each other out, causing no net ecosystem effects.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Bradford, M A -- Jones, T H -- Bardgett, R D -- Black, H I J -- Boag, B -- Bonkowski, M -- Cook, R -- Eggers, T -- Gange, A C -- Grayston, S J -- Kandeler, E -- McCaig, A E -- Newington, J E -- Prosser, J I -- Setala, H -- Staddon, P L -- Tordoff, G M -- Tscherko, D -- Lawton, J H -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2002 Oct 18;298(5593):615-8.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Population Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, Imperial College at Silwood Park, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK. m.a.bradford@ic.ac.uk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12386334" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Bacteria/growth & development
;
Biomass
;
Body Constitution
;
Carbon/metabolism
;
Ecological Systems, Closed
;
*Ecosystem
;
Environment
;
Fungi/growth & development
;
Oxygen Consumption
;
Photosynthesis
;
Plant Development
;
Plant Roots/metabolism
;
Poaceae/growth & development
;
Population Density
;
*Soil
;
Soil Microbiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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