Search results for "ecological insurance"

Erosion of biodiversity affects the stability of soil microbial communities

2012

Anthropogenic activities have led to a significant modification/reduction of biodiversity. By observing this erosion, the understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has emerged as a central issue in ecological and environmental sciences during the last decade. This relationship between diversity-stability-function has been extensively studied by plant ecologists, but remains largely unexplored for soil microorganisms. In this context, we studied the impact of an erosion of biodiversity on the stability of soil microbial communities (i.e. resistance and resilience) in response to two perturbations: a residual metallic stress (mercury input at 20 ppm) and…