A timely reminder of technical limitations

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Putting science back into microbial ecology : a question of approach

Funding: This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (grant no. NE/L006286/1). Acknowledgements: I am indebted to Dr Cécile Gubry-Rangin and Pro-fessor Graeme Nicol for invaluable comments on the manuscript Data accessibility: This article has no additional data. Competing interests: I declare I have no competing interests.Peer reviewedPostprin

Archaea produce lower yields of N2O than bacteria during aerobic ammonia oxidation in soil

Acknowledgments The authors are members of the Nitrous Oxide Research Alliance (NORA), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN and research project under the EU's seventh framework program (FP7). GN is funded by the AXA Research Fund. The authors would like to thank Dr Nicholas Morley for assistance with gas chromatography, Dr Robin Walker and the SRUC Craibstone Estate (Aberdeen) for access to the agricultural plots and Dr Thomas Cornulier for statistical advice.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Role of functionally dominant species in varying environmental regimes: evidence for the performance-enhancing effect of biodiversity

Background Theory suggests that biodiversity can act as a buffer against disturbances and environmental variability via two major mechanisms: Firstly, a stabilising effect by decreasing the temporal variance in ecosystem functioning due to compensatory processes; and secondly, a performance enhancing effect by raising the level of community response through the selection of better performing species. Empirical evidence for the stabilizing effect of biodiversity is readily available, whereas experimental confirmation of the performance-enhancing effect of biodiversity is sparse. Results Here, we test the effect of different environmental regimes (constant versus fluctuating temperature) on bacterial biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relations. We show that positive effects of species richness on ecosystem functioning are enhanced by stronger temperature fluctuations due to the increased performance of individual species. Conclusions Our results provide evidence for the performance enhancing effect and suggest that selection towards functionally dominant species is likely to benefit the maintenance of ecosystem functioning under more variable conditions

Archaeal and bacterial ammonia-oxidisers in soil : the quest for niche specialisation and differentiation

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Ammonia oxidation is not required for growth of Group 1.1c soil Thaumarchaeota

© FEMS 2015. FUNDING EBW is funded by Centre for Genome Enabled Biology and Medicine, University of Aberdeen.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Approaches to understanding the ecology and evolution of understudied terrestrial archaeal ammonia-oxidisers

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The application of high-throughput sequencing technology to analysis of amoA phylogeny and environmental niche specialisation of terrestrial bacterial ammonia-oxidisers

AA was supported by a Natural Environmental Research Council grant (NE/L006286/1) and CGR by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (UF150571).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Ammonia oxidisers in a non-nitrifying Brazilian savanna soil

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