Interaction balance governs microbial community richness-stability
relationship in terrestrial ecosystems
Abstract
Richness-stability relationships (RSRs), such as richness-resistance
relationship and richness-resilience relationship, are a basic, but
controversial, question in ecology. RSRs vary among different
communities, with the positive and negative interactions among community
members considered as the potential cause of different RSRs. However,
there is still no empirical data to support the relationship between
these interactions and RSRs. To confirm the potential effect of
community interactions on RSRs, we selected soil microbial communities
from ecosystems that represented 5 different successional stages and
conducted a simulated stress-recovery incubation. Our results showed
that soil microbial community RSRs were controlled by the balance of
positive and negative interactions. If positive and negative interaction
of the microbial community network were balanced, the
richness-resistance relationship was significantly positive while the
richness-resilience relationship was negative. In contrast, if positive
and negative interaction were unbalanced, the richness-resistance
relationship was significantly negative while the richness-resilience
relationship was positive.