Locally extreme environments are a powerful tool for the study of slow ecological and evolutionary processes, largely because they enable long-term insight into adaptation of the natural communities and their ecological networks. These systems allow the conceptual compression of both time and space, allowing the investigation of important questions at manageable spatio-temporal scales. Here a case study of mofettes as natural sites with constant geogenic CO2 exhalations and soil hypoxia acting on the biological communities is presented, with a review of a wide range of studies from potential analogues for climate change, model ecosystems for environmental impact assessments for carbon capture and storage (CCS), to plant ecophysiological, and ecological studies of distinct groups of organisms from micro to macro scale. The paper also shows where the greatest advances in using discrete extreme environments with long-term and constant selective pressures in the context of global change ecology is likely to appear in the future.
COBISS.SI-ID: 8491129
There is a limited understanding of the importance of abiotic factors in regulating biodiversity and structure of many functionally important soil microbial communities. In this paper we present a molecular characterisation of archaeal and bacterial communities, exposed to longterm change in soil abiotic environment at natural CO2 springs (mofettes), using molecular methods. Our results show major shifts in archaeal and bacterial communities towards anaerobic and methanogenic taxa dominating in hypoxic soils. We conclude that soil hypoxia can cause major shifts in community composition of soil microbes that can generate significant implications for ecosystem functioning (e.g. nutrient cycling and CH4 production). Our data indicate that mofettes offer a good model system for studying the response of natural microbial communities to longterm environmental changes.
COBISS.SI-ID: 7763321
Soil is a limited resource often contaminated with pollutants. Recently, several soil remediation processes have been developed, including an EDTA (ethylene-diaminete-traacetic acid) chelating agent extraction that results in high removal efficiency of the contaminants. There is a limited knowledge on how this procedure affects soil microorganisms, including plant root endosymbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. In this paper we present data on the mycorrhizal potential of soil after the remediation procedure, as well with the molecular characterization of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity in long-term heavy metal polluted soil before and after soil remediation, and before and after soil inoculation with commercial and indigenous (local) fungal inocula using an examination of 18S rRNA clone libraries. After the remediation treatment soils had very low mycorrhizal potential. Functional mycorrhizal symbiosis with plants was established either by commercial or local (grassland roots and rhizosphere soil) inoculum addition to the soil and remediated soil was successfully revitalized after the treatment. The use of the local inoculum resulted in a higher arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity in the roots of plants growing in the remediated soil compared to the ones revitalized with the commercial inoculum.
COBISS.SI-ID: 8445305
In this paper an overview of research in the fields of microbial ecology and biodiversity in presented, with a focus on the studies describing the impact of the changed soil gas regime on communities of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, archaea and bacteria. Along with the fast development of new, highthroughput molecular techniques driving the field of molecular ecology, mofettes enable new insights into the importance of the abiotic environmental factors in regulating soil biodiversity, and the community structure of these functionally important microbial groups.
COBISS.SI-ID: 7770745
Traditionally, taxonomic identification has relied upon morphological characters. In the last two decades, molecular tools based on DNA sequences of short standardised gene fragments, termed DNA barcodes, have been developed for species discrimination. The most common DNA barcode used in animals is a fragment of the cytochrome c oxidase (COI ) mitochondrial gene, while for plants, two chloroplast gene fragments from the RuBisCo large subunit (rbcL) and maturase K (matK) genes are widely used. Information gathered from DNA barcodes can be used beyond taxonomic studies and will have far-reaching implications across many fields of biology, including ecology (rapid biodiversity assessment and food chain analysis), conservation biology (monitoring of protected species), biosecurity (early identification of invasive pest species), medicine (identification of medically important pathogens and their vectors) and pharmacology (identification of active compounds). However, it is important that the limitations of DNA barcoding are understood and techniques continually adapted and improved as this young science matures.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1536021700