The Pulse-Reserve Paradigm of Aridland Function from the Microbial Perspective
Abstract
The pulse-reserve paradigm has been a central tenet for the interpretation of arid land ecology and biogeochemistry for many decades. It proposed a direct relationship of water as a master variable that organizes biotic responses and organismal adaptation through investments in energy and carbon reserves. It has been largely tested and modified on the basis or datasets obtained from plants. And yet, in the last decade it has become clear that biological soil crust communities are also important contributors to the ecology of arid systems, their "mantles of fertility". But these communities are largely microbial. Logically, it would be of interest to ascertain if these communities, and by extent other habitats of arid lands dominated by microbes, can be expect to abide by the pulse-reserve paradigm. I will review recent studies by our group, our collaborators and others, that deal with the eco-physiology of microbial components of biological soil crusts in an organismally explicit (non-black-box) manner. From this it can be gleaned that, much like in plants, the functional ecology of microbes can be understood well under this paradigm.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.B31D..03G
- Keywords:
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- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0428 Carbon cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0486 Soils/pedology;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE