The spatial scaling of saprotrophic fungal beta diversity in decomposing leaves

Assembly of fungal communities remains poorly understood in part because of the daunting range of spatial scales that may be involved in this process. Here, we use individual leaves as a natural sampling unit, comprising spatially distinct habitat and/or resource patches with unique histories and suites of resources. Spatial patterns in fungal beta diversity were tested for consistency with the metacommunity paradigms of species sorting and neutral dynamics. Thirty senesced leaves were collected from the forest floor (O horizon) in replicate upland forest, riparian forest and vernal pool habitats. We quantified spatial distance between leaves, and fungal community composition was assayed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism. Significant distance‐decay relationships were detected at all but one upland site. This is the first study where changes in fungal community composition were quantified across discrete adjacent habitat patches, providing evidence that fungal distance decay is operational at a scale of centimetres. Although leaves of differing lignin contents were sampled from each site, leaf type was not consistently important in explaining variation in fungal community composition. However, depth of a leaf within the forest floor significantly influenced community composition at five of six sites. Environmental heterogeneity associated with depth could include moisture gradients, relative influence of soil or spore colonization, and impact of forest floor biotic community (i.e. collembola and earthworms). Because the influence of spatial distance and depth on fungal community composition could not be disentangled, both species‐sorting and neutral processes may be embedded within the distance‐decay relationships that we found.     

Comparison of soil microbial communities inhabiting vineyards and native sclerophyllous forests in central Chile

Natural ecosystems provide services to agriculture such as pest control, soil nutrients, and key microbial components. These services and others in turn provide essential elements that fuel biomass productivity. Responsible agricultural management and conservation of natural habitats can enhance these ecosystem services. Vineyards are currently driving land‐use changes in many Mediterranean ecosystems. These land‐use changes could have important effects on the supporting ecosystems services related to the soil properties and the microbial communities associated with forests and vineyard soils. Here, we explore soil bacterial and fungal communities present in sclerophyllous forests and organic vineyards from three different wine growing areas in central Chile. We employed terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms (T‐RFLP) to describe the soil microbial communities inhabiting native forests and vineyards in central Chile. We found that the bacterial community changed between the sampled growing areas; however, the fungal community did not differ. At the local scale, our findings show that fungal communities differed between habitats because fungi species might be more sensitive to land‐use change compared to bacterial species, as bacterial communities did not change between forests and vineyards. We discuss these findings based on the sensitivity of microbial communities to soil properties and land‐use change. Finally, we focus our conclusions on the importance of naturally derived ecosystem services to vineyards.     

古大湖湿地盐碱土壤微生物群落结构及多样性分析

以黑龙江省古大湖湿地原生、林地、耕地及湖岸盐碱土壤微生物为研究对象,基于高通量测序方法,分析4种生境类型条件下土壤细菌和真菌群落结构及多样性。结合土壤理化指标,进一步分析影响微生物群落多样性的环境因子。结果表明:细菌群落中变形菌门的相对丰度值最高,真菌群落中为子囊菌门。同一生境细菌群落多样性具有相似性,而真菌具有一定的差异;不同生境间两者均具有差异。耕地土壤和林地土壤的细菌群落多样性接近,但与湖岸土壤真菌的更相近。前两者中细菌群落多样性较高,其次为原生土壤,而湖岸土壤中的最低。耕地土壤与湖岸土壤真菌群落多样性较高,原生土壤较低,而林地土壤中最低。与真菌相比,细菌的群落多样性受土壤环境因子影响更大,其中pH值、含水量对土壤细菌和真菌群落多样性均具有显著影响。     

毛竹种植对土壤细菌和真菌群落结构及多样性的影响

为揭示天然林改为毛竹林过程中土壤微生物变化规律,在浙江省湖州市安吉县和长兴县两地选择不同种植历史的粗放经营毛竹林,分层采集0～20和20～40 cm的混合土壤样品,应用PCR-DGGE技术分析土壤细菌和真菌群落结构及多样性变化.结果表明: 在马尾松林改种毛竹林或毛竹林入侵杂灌阔叶林形成毛竹纯林过程中,土壤细菌和真菌的群落结构均发生明显变化,且细菌结构对毛竹种植的响应更敏感;随着毛竹生长时间的延长,表层土壤细菌群落表现出抵抗干扰、最后向改种毛竹之前状态恢复的趋势.毛竹种植时间、样地和土层均对土壤细菌和真菌多样性产生显著影响,其中样地和土层的影响明显大于种植时间.土壤性质和细菌、真菌结构的冗余分析结果表明,不同地点、不同土层驱动土壤微生物结构随时间变化的主要因子没有一致规律,且第1、2轴对样地变化的解释率大多低于65.0%,说明除本研究分析的5个土壤化学指标外,可能还有其他土壤理化性质共同驱动微生物结构的变化.     

Bacterial Community Composition in Central European Running Waters Examined by Temperature Gradient Gel Electrophoresis and Sequence Analysis of 16S rRNA Genes

The bacterial community composition in small streams and a river in central Germany was examined by temperature gradient gel electrophoresis (TGGE) with PCR products of 16S rRNA gene fragments and sequence analysis. Complex TGGE band patterns suggested high levels of diversity of bacterial species in all habitats of these environments. Cluster analyses demonstrated distinct differences among the communities in stream and spring water, sandy sediments, biofilms on stones, degrading leaves, and soil. The differences between stream water and sediment were more significant than those between sites within the same habitat along the stretch from the stream source to the mouth. TGGE data from an entire stream course suggest that, in the upper reach of the stream, a special suspended bacterial community is already established and changes only slightly downstream. The bacterial communities in water and sediment in an acidic headwater with a pH below 5 were highly similar to each other but deviated distinctly from the communities at the other sites. As ascertained by nucleotide sequence analysis, stream water communities were dominated by Betaproteobacteria (one-third of the total bacteria), whereas sediment communities were composed mainly of Betaproteobacteria and members of the Fibrobacteres/Acidobacteria group (each accounting for about 25% of bacteria). Sequences obtained from bacteria from water samples indicated the presence of typical cosmopolitan freshwater organisms. TGGE bands shared between stream and soil samples, as well as sequences found in bacteria from stream samples that were related to those of soil bacteria, demonstrated the occurrence of some species in both stream and soil habitats. Changes in bacterial community composition were correlated with geographic distance along a stream, but in comparisons of different streams and rivers, community composition was correlated only with environmental conditions.     

Long‐term dynamics of bird diversity in forest and suburb: decay,turnover or homogenization?

Aim Urbanization and deforestation are important drivers of biodiversity change. However, long‐term changes in faunal communities within urbanizing regions are poorly understood. We investigated how well observed community changes in both space and time agree with expectations based on current paradigms in urban ecology. Location Greater Brisbane region, Australia. Methods We compared bird assemblages in two time‐periods 15 years apart, at multiple sites in remnant forest and residential suburbs across an urbanizing landscape. Differences in assemblage composition, species abundances and functional groupings were assessed within and between habitats. Results Compared with forest, suburbs in both time‐periods had over twice the total bird abundance, a different species composition, greater between‐site community similarity, a greater proportion of non‐native species and greater dominance by large‐bodied species. These differences corresponded with changes in sites whose habitat was converted from forest to suburb. Between time‐periods, abundances of 58% of suburban species changed significantly compared with those of 11% in forest. Increaser species outnumbered decreasers in suburbs, with the reverse in forest. Abundance of small‐bodied birds decreased 70% in suburbs and 20% in forest. Broad‐spectrum competitors and nest predators were common among suburban increasers. Among invasive species, the number of increasers was counterbalanced by decreasers. Both site‐scale species richness and between‐site community similarity increased to a small extent in both habitats. Main conclusions Species composition and ecological function of suburban bird communities were very dynamic. Suburban assemblages were neither a subset of forest species nor an increasingly non‐native compilation. Communities in large forest patches were comparatively stable. The notion of habitat‐specific species turnover better characterizes the nature of most changes than either species decline or homogenization, even though both of these were evident. There is considerable scope for careful urban planning, focused on both among‐ and within‐habitat variety, to sustain bird diversity in urbanizing landscapes.     

Classification of macroinvertebrate communities across drainage basins in Victoria, Australia: consequences of sampling on a broad spatial scale for predictive modelling

1. Spatial scale may influence the interpretation of environmental gradients that underlie classification and ordination analyses of lotic macroinvertebrate communities. This could have important consequences for the spatial scale over which predictive models derived from these multivariate analyses can be applied. 2. Macroinvertebrate community data (identified to genus or species) from edge and main-channel habitats were obtained for sites on rivers from 25 of the 29 drainage basins in Victoria. Trends in community similarity were analysed by carrying out separate multivariate analyses on data from the edge habitats (199 sites) and the main-channel habitats (163 sites). 3. Hierarchical classification (UPGMA) showed that the edge data could be placed into 11 site groups and the main-channel data into 12 site groups. 4. Ordination analysis (hybrid multidimensional scaling) showed no sharp disjunctions between site groups in either habitat; overlap was frequent. Correlation of the ordination patterns with environmental variables showed that edge communities varied longitudinally within a drainage basin and from the east to the west of Victoria. These two trends were superimposed on one another to form a single gradient on the ordination. The taxon richness of edge communities was also related to the species richness of macrophytes at a site. Main-channel communities also displayed a longitudinal and a geographic gradient, but these two gradients were uncorrelated on the ordination. 5. Community similarity only weakly reflected geographic proximity in either habitat. A preliminary subdivision of Victoria into a series of biogeographic regions did not match the pattern of distribution of site groups for the edge habitat, illustrating the difficulties of applying to lotic communities a priori regionalizations based on terrestrial features of the landscape. 6. The longitudinal gradients in the two data sets were commonly observed in data gathered at smaller spatial scales in Victoria. The other gradients (geographic, macrophyte), however, were either not consistently repeated or not evident at smaller spatial scales. At small spatial scales (i.e. within a single drainage basin) gradients were related to variables that varied over restricted ranges, e.g. mean particle size of the substratum. 7. Species richness was very variable when plotted against river slope or distance of site from source; both of these are measures of position on the longitudinal gradients. In contrast to suggestions in the literature, species richness did not show a unimodal trend on these gradients, or any other trend. 8. Environmental gradients (apart from longitudinal gradients) that underlie predictive models of macroinvertebrate distribution are reflections of the spatial scale on which the model has been constructed and cannot be extrapolated to different scales. Models must be suited to the spatial scale over which predictions are required.     

Geographic distance and pH drive bacterial distribution in alkaline lake sediments across Tibetan Plateau

Continent-scale biogeography has been extensively studied in soils and marine systems, but little is known about biogeographical patterns in non-marine sediments. We used barcode pyrosequencing to quantify the effects of local geochemical properties and geographic distance for bacterial community structure and membership, using sediment samples from 15 lakes on the Tibetan Plateau (4-1670?km apart). Bacterial communities were surprisingly diverse, and distinct from soil communities. Four of 26 phyla detected were dominant: Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes and Actinobacteria, albeit 20.2% of sequences were unclassified at the phylum level. As previously observed in acidic soil, pH was the dominant factor influencing alkaline sediment community structure, phylotype richness and phylogenetic diversity. In contrast, archaeal communities were less affected by pH. More geographically distant sites had more dissimilar communities (r?=?0.443, P?=?0.030). Variance partitioning analysis showed that geographic distance (historical contingencies) contributed more to bacterial community variation (12.2%) than any other factor, although the environmental factors explained more variance when combined (28.9%). Together, our results show that pH is the best predictor of bacterial community structure in alkaline sediments, and confirm that both geographic distance and chemical factors govern bacterial biogeography in lake sediments.     

Endolithic microbial composition in Helliwell Hills,a newly investigated Mars-like area in Antarctica

The diversity and composition of Antarctic cryptoendolithic microbial communities in the Mars-analogue site of Helliwell Hills (Northern Victoria Land, Continental Antarctica) are investigated, for the first time, applying both culture-dependent and high-throughput sequencing approaches. The study includes all the domains of the tree of life: Eukaryotes, Bacteria and Archaea to give a complete overview of biodiversity and community structure. Furthermore, to explore the geographic distribution of endoliths throughout the Victoria Land (Continental Antarctica), we compared the fungal and bacterial community composition and structure of endolithically colonized rocks, collected in >30 sites in 10 years of Italian Antarctic Expeditions. Compared with the fungi and other eukaryotes, the prokaryotic communities were richer in species, more diverse and highly heterogeneous. Despite the diverse community compositions, shared populations were found and were dominant in all sites. Local diversification was observed and included prokaryotes as members of Alphaproteobacteria and Crenarchaeota (Archaea), the last detected for the first time in these cryptoendolithic communities. Few eukaryotes, namely lichen-forming fungal species as Lecidella grenii, were detected in Helliwell Hills only. These findings suggest that geographic distance and isolation in these remote areas may promote the establishment of peculiar locally diversified microorganisms.     

Exploring the Links between Post-Industrial Landscape History and Ecology through Participatory Methods

There is increasing recognition of the importance for local biodiversity of post-mining sites, many of which lie near communities that have suffered significant social and economic deprivation as the result of mine closures. However, no studies to date have actively used the knowledge of local communities to relate the history and treatment of post-mining sites to their current ecological status. We report a study of two post-mining sites in the Yorkshire coalfield of the UK in which the local community were involved in developing site histories and assessing plant and invertebrate species composition. Site histories developed using participatory GIS revealed that the sites had a mixture of areas of spontaneous succession and technical reclamation, and identified that both planned management interventions and informal activities influenced habitat heterogeneity and ecological diversity. Two groups of informal activity were identified as being of particular importance. Firstly, there has been active protection by the community of flower-rich habitats of conservation value (e.g. calcareous grassland) and distinctive plant species (e.g. orchids) which has also provided important foraging resources for butterfly and bumblebee species. Secondly, disturbance by activities such as use of motorbikes, informal camping, and cutting of trees and shrubs for fuel, as well as planned management interventions such as spreading of brick rubble, has provided habitat for plant species of open waste ground and locally uncommon invertebrate species which require patches of bare ground. This study demonstrates the importance of informal, and often unrecorded, activities by the local community in providing diverse habitats and increased biodiversity within a post-mining site, and shows that active engagement with the local community and use of local knowledge can enhance ecological interpretation of such sites and provide a stronger basis for successful future management.     

Patterns of parasite community dissimilarity: the significant role of land use and lack of distance‐decay in a bat–helminth system

Increasing community dissimilarity across geographic distance has been described for a wide variety of organisms and understanding its underlying causes is key to understanding mechanisms driving patterns of biodiversity. Both niche‐based and neutral processes may produce a distance decay relationship; however, disentangling their relative influence requires simultaneous examination of multiple potential drivers. Parasites represent a unique opportunity in which to study distance decay because community dissimilarity may depend on environmental requirements and dispersal capability of parasites as well also those of their hosts. We used big brown bats Eptesicus fuscus and their intestinal helminths to investigate: 1) independent contributions of geographic and environmental distances on dissimilarity of intestinal helminth component communities between populations of big brown bats; 2) which environmental variables best explained variation in community dissimilarity; and 3) whether similar patterns of decay with geographic or environmental distance were observed for within‐host population and within‐individual host parasite communities. We used compositional measures of community dissimilarity to examine how parasite communities may change with geographic distance and varying environmental conditions. Non‐spatial variables strongly influenced compositional parasite community dissimilarity over multiple community scales, and we observed little evidence for spatial processes such as distance decay. Environment surrounding roost sites better predicted helminth community dissimilarity than any other class of variables and landcover classes representing anthropogenic modification consistently explained variation in community structure. Our results indicate that human disturbance drives significant patterns of parasite community dissimilarity, most likely by changing the presence or abundance of intermediate hosts in an area.     

How Does Conversion of Natural Tropical Rainforest Ecosystems Affect Soil Bacterial and Fungal Communities in the Nile River Watershed of Uganda?

Uganda''s forests are globally important for their conservation values but are under pressure from increasing human population and consumption. In this study, we examine how conversion of natural forest affects soil bacterial and fungal communities. Comparisons in paired natural forest and human-converted sites among four locations indicated that natural forest soils consistently had higher pH, organic carbon, nitrogen, and calcium, although variation among sites was large. Despite these differences, no effect on the diversity of dominant taxa for either bacterial or fungal communities was detected, using polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE). Composition of fungal communities did generally appear different in converted sites, but surprisingly, we did not observe a consistent pattern among sites. The spatial distribution of some taxa and community composition was associated with soil pH, organic carbon, phosphorus and sodium, suggesting that changes in soil communities were nuanced and require more robust metagenomic methods to understand the various components of the community. Given the close geographic proximity of the paired sampling sites, the similarity between natural and converted sites might be due to continued dispersal between treatments. Fungal communities showed greater environmental differentiation than bacterial communities, particularly according to soil pH. We detected biotic homogenization in converted ecosystems and substantial contribution of β-diversity to total diversity, indicating considerable geographic structure in soil biota in these forest communities. Overall, our results suggest that soil microbial communities are relatively resilient to forest conversion and despite a substantial and consistent change in the soil environment, the effects of conversion differed widely among sites. The substantial difference in soil chemistry, with generally lower nutrient quantity in converted sites, does bring into question, how long this resilience will last.     

Environmental filtering affects soil fungal community composition more than dispersal limitation at regional scales

The relative importance of dispersal limitation versus environmental filtering for community assembly has received much attention for macroorganisms. These processes have only recently been examined in microbial communities. Instead, microbial dispersal has mostly been measured as community composition change over space (i.e., distance decay). Here we directly examined fungal composition in airborne wind currents and soil fungal communities across a 40 000 km² regional landscape to determine if dispersal limitation or abiotic factors were structuring soil fungal communities. Over this landscape, neither airborne nor soil fungal communities exhibited compositional differences due to geographic distance. Airborne fungal communities shifted temporally while soil fungal communities were correlated with abiotic parameters. These patterns suggest that environmental filtering may have the largest influence on fungal regional community assembly in soils, especially for aerially dispersed fungal taxa. Furthermore, we found evidence that dispersal of fungal spores differs between fungal taxa and can be both a stochastic and deterministic process. The spatial range of soil fungal taxa was correlated with their average regional abundance across all sites, which may imply stochastic dispersal mechanisms. Nevertheless, spore volume was also negatively correlated with spatial range for some species. Smaller volume spores may be adapted to long-range dispersal, or establishment, suggesting that deterministic fungal traits may also influence fungal distributions. Fungal life-history traits may influence their distributions as well. Hypogeous fungal taxa exhibited high local abundance, but small spatial ranges, while epigeous fungal taxa had lower local abundance, but larger spatial ranges. This study is the first, to our knowledge, to directly sample air dispersal and soil fungal communities simultaneously across a regional landscape. We provide some of the first evidence that soil fungal communities are mostly assembled through environmental filtering and experience little dispersal limitation.     

Butterfly diversity at the ecotone between agricultural and semi‐natural habitats across a climatic gradient

Aim Understanding the response of species to ecotones and habitat edges is essential to designing conservation management, especially in mosaic agricultural landscapes. This study examines how species diversity and composition change with distance from semi‐natural habitats, over ecotones into agricultural fields, and how within‐site patterns of community transition change across a climatic gradient and differ between crop types. Location A total of 19 sites in Israel where semi‐natural habitats border agricultural fields (wheat fields or olive groves) distributed along a sharp climatic gradient ranging between 100 and 800 mm mean annual rainfall. Methods  We performed butterfly surveys in 2006. We analysed species richness (α‐diversity), diversity, community nestedness and species turnover (β‐diversity) within sites and between sites (γ‐diversity). We also assessed where species of conservation concern occurred. Results In wheat sites, richness and diversity declined abruptly from ecotones to fields and remained homogenously poor throughout the fields, regardless of climate. In olive sites, despite the sharp structural boundary, richness and diversity remained high from the semi‐natural habitat to the grove margins and then declined gradually into groves. Species of conservation concern occurred across all habitats at olive sites, but none were found inside wheat fields or at their ecotones. The contrast in community structure between semi‐natural habitats and fields was affected by both climate and field type. Irrigation in arid regions did not augment species diversity. Main conclusions Our results indicate that consideration of crop type, within a climatic context, should receive high priority in biodiversity conservation in agricultural areas. In ‘hostile’ crops, such as wheat, we suggest favouring a combination of high‐intensity management and wide margins over less intensive management without margins, which may merely aid generalist butterfly species. The scarcity of butterflies in arid irrigated fields suggests a need to carefully assess the effects of irrigation and agrochemicals on species’ communities.     

An all-taxon microbial inventory of the Moorea coral reef ecosystem

The Moorea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Site (17.50°S, 149.83°W) comprises the fringe of coral reefs and lagoons surrounding the volcanic island of Moorea in the Society Islands of French Polynesia. As part of our Microbial Inventory Research Across Diverse Aquatic LTERS biodiversity inventory project, we characterized microbial community composition across all three domains of life using amplicon pyrosequencing of the V6 (bacterial and archaeal) and V9 (eukaryotic) hypervariable regions of small-subunit ribosomal RNA genes. Our survey spanned eight locations along a 130-km transect from the reef lagoon to the open ocean to examine changes in communities along inshore to offshore gradients. Our results illustrate consistent community differentiation between inshore and offshore ecosystems across all three domains, with greater richness in all domains in the reef-associated habitats. Bacterial communities were more homogenous among open ocean sites spanning >100 km than among inshore sites separated by <1 km, whereas eukaryotic communities varied more offshore than inshore, and archaea showed more equal levels of dissimilarity among subhabitats. We identified signature communities representative of specific geographic and geochemical milieu, and characterized co-occurrence patterns of specific microbial taxa within the inshore ecosystem including several bacterial groups that persist in geographical niches across time. Bacterial and archaeal communities were dominated by few abundant taxa but spatial patterning was consistent through time and space in both rare and abundant communities. This is the first in-depth inventory analysis of biogeographic variation of all three microbial domains within a coral reef ecosystem.     

Urban stress is associated with variation in microbial species composition—but not richness—in Manhattan

The biological diversity and composition of microorganisms influences both human health outcomes and ecological processes; therefore, understanding the factors that influence microbial biodiversity is key to creating healthy, functional landscapes in which to live. In general, biological diversity is predicted to be limited by habitat size, which for green areas is often reduced in cities, and by chronic disturbance (stress). These hypotheses have not previously been tested in microbial systems in direct comparison to macroorganisms. Here we analyzed bacterial, fungal and ant communities in small road medians (average area 0.0008 km²) and larger parks (average area 0.64 km²) across Manhattan (NYC). Bacterial species richness was not significantly different between medians and parks, but community composition was significantly distinct. In contrast, ant communities differed both in composition and richness with fewer ant species in medians than parks. Fungi showed no significant variation in composition or richness but had few shared taxa between habitats or sites. The diversity and composition of microbes appears less sensitive to habitat patchiness or urban stress than those of macroorganisms. Microbes and their associated ecosystem services and functions may be more resilient to the negative effects of urbanization than has been previously appreciated.     

Habitat matters: The role of spore bank fungi in early seedling establishment of Florida slash pines

This study investigated broad patterns in communities of ectomycorrhizal fungi from three Florida habitats (sandhills, scrub, and pine rocklands) and the ability of spore bank fungi to associate with Pinus elliottii (slash pine) and Pinus densa (south Florida slash pine). Efforts to replant pines in the endangered pine rocklands are vital to the persistence of this habitat, yet little is known about the ectomycorrhizal fungi communities or how they may differ from those in other pine-dominated habitats in Florida. We used high-throughput amplicon sequencing (HTS) to assess baseline fungal communities and greenhouse bioassays to bait ectomycorrhizal fungi using seedlings. HTS soil data recovered 188 ectomycorrhizal species but only a few subsequently colonized the bioassay seedlings. We recovered 21 ectomycorrhizal species on pine seedlings including common spore bank fungi such as Cenococcum, Suillus, and Tuber, but Rhizopogon species were dominant across all sites and habitats. Habitat type and site were significant variables influencing the community composition of the total soil fungal community, soil ectomycorrhizal community, and the fungi found on seedling root tips. However, we found no significant differences between the ectomycorrhizal communities on seedling roots from the two Pinus species.     

Plant community composition and attributes reveal conservation implications for newly created grassland on capped landfill sites

Biodiversity conservation through restoring degraded habitats or creating new habitats is advocated in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. Restored grasslands on capped landfill sites are semi-natural habitats that could potentially support a wide range of plant communities. However, it is unknown whether these re-created habitats represent a significant resource in terms of biodiversity conservation. The UK National Vegetation Classification (NVC) was used to study these communities on nine restored capped landfill sites together with paired reference sites in the East Midlands region of the UK during 2007. Plant species data were collected by random quadrats along two 100 m transects from each site. The effects of restoration were investigated by examining plant attributes and Ellenberg indicators on restored landfill sites in comparison to paired reference sites. A total of 170 plant species were found from both sets of sites. There were no significant differences for most of the plant attributes between restored landfill sites and reference sites, though reference sites had significantly higher mean frequencies of native plants, nationally decreasing species and perennial species. In total 26 broad NVC community types were identified of which more than 70% fell within mesotrophic grassland (MG). The diversity of NVC communities confirms that underlying environmental factors such as soil fertility are important, dictating the type of plant communities that exist. It is recommended that management of these capped landfill sites should be targeted towards specific NVC community types to meet conservation targets.     

Habitat Diversity in the Conservation of the Grassland Auchenorrhyncha (Homoptera: Cercopidae,Cicadellidae, Cixidae,Delphacidae) of Northern Britain

Definition of northern British grassland Auchenorrhyncha habitats was carried out using a classification based on analysis of data from 351 sites, involving 121 species, located between Greater Manchester and northern Scotland. Ten habitats were identified showing little influence of geographical position and exhibiting a basic upland-lowland trend. Other factors influencing habitat and species assemblage distribution were soil water, vegetation structure and land cover. An analysis of the species data with satellite-derived land cover data indicated that the lowland covers of tilled land, coast and urban and the upland covers of heath grassland and shrub heath were most important in affecting both species and assemblage distribution. The large-scale survey of grassland sites provided new information on both the ecology and distribution of individual Auchenorrhyncha species. Some were limited to specific habitat types but a considerable number were generalist species found in most or all of the 10 habitat types but showing preferences within upland to lowland or wet to dry site gradients. The ability to generate a subtle grassland Auchenorrhyncha habitat classification with large-scale survey results from standardised and reproducible sampling increases the potential for using habitat diversity for the conservation of grassland Auchenorrhyncha. Habitat preservation would also ensure that species richness (biodiversity) is maintained and that the habitats of rare species are conserved.     

Links between plant and fungal communities across a deforestation chronosequence in the Amazon rainforest

Understanding the interactions among microbial communities, plant communities and soil properties following deforestation could provide insights into the long-term effects of land-use change on ecosystem functions, and may help identify approaches that promote the recovery of degraded sites. We combined high-throughput sequencing of fungal rDNA and molecular barcoding of plant roots to estimate fungal and plant community composition in soil sampled across a chronosequence of deforestation. We found significant effects of land-use change on fungal community composition, which was more closely correlated to plant community composition than to changes in soil properties or geographic distance, providing evidence for strong links between above- and below-ground communities in tropical forests.