Nematodes in a polar desert reveal the relative role of biotic interactions in the coexistence of soil animals

Tancredi Caruso, Ian D. Hogg, Uffe N. Nielsen, Eric M. Bottos, Charles K. Lee, David W. Hopkins, S. Craig Cary, John E. Barrett, T. G. Allan Green, Bryan C. Storey, Diana H. Wall, Byron J. Adams

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

39 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Abiotic factors are major determinants of soil animal distributions and their dominant role is pronounced in extreme ecosystems, with biotic interactions seemingly playing a minor role. We modelled co-occurrence and distribution of the three nematode species that dominate the soil food web of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (Antarctica). Abiotic factors, other biotic groups, and autocorrelation all contributed to structuring nematode species distributions. However, after removing their effects, we found that the presence of the most abundant nematode species greatly, and negatively, affected the probability of detecting one of the other two species. We observed similar patterns in relative abundances for two out of three pairs of species. Harsh abiotic conditions alone are insufficient to explain contemporary nematode distributions whereas the role of negative biotic interactions has been largely underestimated in soil. The future challenge is to understand how the effects of global change on biotic interactions will alter species coexistence.
Original languageEnglish
Article number63
Number of pages9
JournalCommunications Biology
Volume2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Open Access - Access Right Statement

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

  • McMurdo Dry Valleys (Antarctica)
  • communities
  • nematodes
  • soil animals

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