Miso is a microbially-fermented soybean food. The miso brewery indoor microbiome contributes to miso fermentation. Japanese breweries are not climate-controlled, so indoor spaces are strongly affected by the prevailing climate. Because climate influences microorganism distribution, our first hypothesis is that latitude, as a proxy for climate, is a major determinant of brewery indoor microbiome structure. Breweries vary in int...

Continued current emissions of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ) by human activities will increase global atmospheric CO 2 and CH 4 concentrations and surface temperature significantly. Fields of paddy rice, the most important form of anthropogenic wetlands, account for about 9% of anthropogenic sources of CH 4 . Elevated atmospheric CO 2 may enhance CH 4 production in rice paddies, potentially reinforcing the increas...

The roots of the majority of tree species are associated with either arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) or ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi. The absorptive roots of tree species also vary widely in their diameter. The linkages between root thickness, mycorrhiza type and nutrient foraging are poorly understood. We conducted a large root ingrowth experiment in the field to investigate how absorptive roots of varying thickness and their assoc...

Aims Climate change can substantially alter ecological communities. However, we hypothesized that, even if novel communities emerge, those communities may not be novel in terms of functional composition. To infer the processes associated with rising temperatures, we evaluated elevational taxonomic/functional turnover of plant and invertebrate communities. Because climate change interacts synergistically with other environmenta...

Aim Spatial patterns in biodiversity along environmental gradients are a central theme in ecology. However, the ways in which local assembly processes control changes in species turnover (β‐diversity) along broader gradients have been less well documented. In this study, we aimed to elucidate factors and processes governing the altitudinal gradients in the β‐diversity of woody plants and ground‐dwelling oribatid mites. Locatio...

Ectomycorrhizal fungal tissues comprise a significant forest‐litter pool. Ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi may also influence the decomposition of other forest‐litter components via competitive interactions with decomposer fungi and by ensheathing fine roots. Because of these direct and indirect effects of ectomycorrhizal fungi, the factors that control the decomposition of EM fungi will strongly control forest‐litter decomposition...

Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 394–407 Abstract Mycorrhizal fungi influence plant growth, local biodiversity and ecosystem function. Effects of the symbiosis on plants span the continuum from mutualism to parasitism. We sought to understand this variation in symbiotic function using meta‐analysis with information theory‐based model selection to assess the relative importance of factors in five categories: (1) identity of the host...

Forest litter is a large reservoir of organic compounds that adds CO 2 to the atmospheric carbon pool when it decomposes. Predicting CO 2 efflux from litter decomposition is difficult because litter can undergo significant diurnal and day‐to‐day shifts in temperature. Moreover, the relationship between temperature and respiration may change if the decomposer microorganisms acclimate to short‐term temperature changes. Therefore...

Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi contribute significantly to ecosystem respiration, but little research has addressed the effect of temperature on ECM fungal respiration. Some plants have the ability to acclimate to temperature such that long‐term exposure to warmer conditions slows respiration at a given measurement temperature and long‐term exposure to cooler conditions increases respiration at a given measurement temperature. We...