Understanding the mechanisms controlling community diversity, functions, succession, and
biogeography is a central, but poorly understood, topic in ecology, particularly in microbial …

Advances in next-generation sequencing have enabled the widespread measurement of
microbiome composition across systems and over the course of microbiome assembly …

Community ecology aims to understand what factors determine the assembly and dynamics
of species assemblages at different spatiotemporal scales. To facilitate the integration …

The order and timing of species immigration during community assembly can affect species
abundances at multiple spatial scales. Known as priority effects, these effects cause …

Evidence is increasing for positive effects of α-diversity on ecosystem functioning. We
highlight here the crucial role of β-diversity–a hitherto underexplored facet of biodiversity–for …

Fungi represent a large proportion of the genetic diversity on Earth and fungal activity
influences the structure of plant and animal communities, as well as rates of ecosystem …

Fungi are considered the primary decomposers of dead plant biomass in terrestrial
ecosystems. However, current knowledge regarding the successive changes in fungal …

Microorganisms play a crucial role in the biological decomposition of plant litter in terrestrial
ecosystems. Due to the permanently changing litter quality during decomposition, studies of …

Biodiversity is important for supporting ecosystem functioning. To evaluate the factors
contributing to the strength of microbial diversity-function relationships in complex terrestrial …

Soil biota provide a number of key ecological services to natural and agricultural
ecosystems. Increasingly, inoculation of soils with beneficial soil biota is being considered …