PREDICTING BIOTIC INTERACTIONS AND THEIR VARIABILITY IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT.

Kadowaki, K., Barbera, C.G., Godsoe, W., Delsuc, F.,Mouquet, N.(2016).

Biology letters, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2015.1073

Key message : Using bacterial microcosms, we illustrate how biotic interactions can vary along an environmental gradient and how this variability can depend on the phylogenetic distance between interacting species. Models predicting species distribution have historically mostly considered abiotic filtering and are only starting to integrate biotic interaction. However, using information on present interactions to forecast the future of biodiversity supposes that biotic interactions will not change when species are confronted with new environments which we show here that it might not be the case.

Effects of biotic interactions on species abundance of Pseudomonas fluorescens and their variability along salinity and phylogenetic gradients. (a) Effects of biotic interactions on species abundance of Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 becomes more negative with increasing salinity (data for all strain pairs included). At individual salinity levels, effects of biotic interactions (i.e. D) represent the proportional changes in population abundance of P. fluorescens SBW25 when grown alone versus in the presence of another competitor strain. Data points for 100 g l salinity treatments were removed as neither strains grew well in the medium. (b) The more phylogenetically distant the strains in a community, the more the effects of biotic interactions change with elevated salinity. The predictor variable is phylogenetic distance between Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 and its paired target strain, with more negative being phylogenetically close to 1.00 being the most distant strain. The response variable is change in D along the salinity gradient for each replicate cline (i.e. the rate at which effects of biotic interactions on the abundance of the focal strain SBW25 change with elevated salinity).

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OTHER TOPICS: Aesthetics of Biodiversity, Biodiversity & Ecosystem Functioning, Biogeography, Macroecology & Ecophylogenetics, Experimental Evolution, Functional Biogeography, Functional Rarity, Metacommunities, Metaecosystems, Reviews and Synthesis, Trophic Biogeography & Metaweb