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Thomas Bell,1,3Duane Ager,2Ji-Inn Song,2,4Jonathan A. Newman,3*Ian P. Thompson,2Andrew K. Lilley,1Christopher J. van der Gast2
The power law that describes the relationship between speciesrichness and area size is one of the few generalizations inecology, but recent studies show that this relationship differsfor microbes. We demonstrate that the natural bacterial communitiesinhabiting small aquatic islands (treeholes) do indeed followthe species-area law. The result requires a re-evaluation ofthe current understanding of how natural microbial communitiesoperate and implies that analogous processes structure bothmicrobial communities and communities of larger organisms.
1 Molecular Microbial Ecology Section, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3SR, UK. 2 Environmental Biotechnology Section, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3SR, UK. 3 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK. 4 Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PJ, UK.
* Present address: Department of Environmental Biology, Universityof Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cjvdg{at}ceh.ac.uk
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Tom Fenchel, Bland J. Finlay;, Edward A. D. Mitchell;, Thomas Bell, Jonathan A. Newman, Ian P. Thompson, Andrew K. Lilley, and Christopher J. van der Gast (23 September 2005) Science309 (5743), 1997.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.309.5743.1997] |Full Text »|PDF »
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