Metacommunity ecology addresses the situation where sets of local communities are
connected by the dispersal of a number of potentially interacting species. Aquatic systems …

Recently, microbiologists have established the existence of biogeographic patterns among a
wide range of microorganisms. The focus of the field is now shifting to identifying the …

Background The deep mechanisms (deterministic and/or stochastic processes) underlying
community assembly are a central challenge in microbial ecology. However, the relative …

To improve the knowledge about the biogeographic patterns of bacteria in soils
contaminated with crude oil, we studied the effects of local geochemical properties and …

The human-microbial ecosystem plays a variety of important roles in human health and
disease. Each person can be viewed as an island-like “patch” of habitat occupied by …

Dispersal costs can be classified into energetic, time, risk and opportunity costs and may be
levied directly or deferred during departure, transfer and settlement. They may equally be …

Relationships between traits of organisms and the structure of their metacommunities have
so far mainly been explored with meta‐analyses. We compared metacommunities of a wide …

Stochastic processes can play an important role in microbial community assembly. Dispersal
limitation is one process that can increase stochasticity and obscure relationships between …

In ecology, biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research has seen a shift in
perspective from taxonomy to function in the last two decades, with successful application of …

The classical view states that microbial biogeography is not affected by dispersal barriers or
historical events, but only influenced by the local contemporary habitat conditions (species …