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Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) as a model system in community, landscape and ecosystem ecology

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Abstract

Model systems have had a profound influence on the development of ecological theory and general principles. Compared to alternatives, the most effective models share some combination of the following characteristics: simpler, smaller, faster, general, idiosyncratic or manipulable. We argue that biological soil crusts (biocrusts) have unique combinations of these features that should be more widely exploited in community, landscape and ecosystem ecology. In community ecology, biocrusts are elucidating the importance of biodiversity and spatial pattern for maintaining ecosystem multifunctionality due to their manipulability in experiments. Due to idiosyncrasies in their modes of facilitation and competition, biocrusts have led to new models on the interplay between environmental stress and biotic interactions and on the maintenance of biodiversity by competitive processes. Biocrusts are perhaps one of the best examples of micro-landscapes—real landscapes that are small in size. Although they exhibit varying patch heterogeneity, aggregation, connectivity and fragmentation, like macro-landscapes, they are also compatible with well-replicated experiments (unlike macro-landscapes). In ecosystem ecology, a number of studies are imposing small-scale, low cost manipulations of global change or state factors in biocrust micro-landscapes. The versatility of biocrusts to inform such disparate lines of inquiry suggests that they are an especially useful model system that can enable researchers to see ecological principles more clearly and quickly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University, 200 E. Pine Knoll Drive, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA

    Matthew A. Bowker

  2. Área de Biodiversidad y Conservación, Departamento de Biología y Geología, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, c/Tulipán s/n., 28933, Móstoles, Spain

    Fernando T. Maestre, Cristina Escolar & Santiago Soliveres

  3. Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    David Eldridge

  4. Canyonlands Research Station, Southwest Biological Science Center, US Geological Survey, 2290 SW. Resource Blvd., Moab, UT, 84532, USA

    Jayne Belnap

  5. Departamento de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano Alto, Marcelino Champagnat, Loja, Ecuador

    Andrea Castillo-Monroy

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  1. Matthew A. Bowker
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  2. Fernando T. Maestre
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  3. David Eldridge
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  4. Jayne Belnap
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  5. Andrea Castillo-Monroy
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  6. Cristina Escolar
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  7. Santiago Soliveres
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Correspondence to Matthew A. Bowker.

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Communicated by Guest Editors of S. I.: Biocrust.

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Bowker, M.A., Maestre, F.T., Eldridge, D. et al. Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) as a model system in community, landscape and ecosystem ecology. Biodivers Conserv 23, 1619–1637 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-014-0658-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-014-0658-x

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