Highlights•Microbial interactions and system function are two ways to study
communities.•Natural microbial communities are difficult to define and to study.•Synthetic …

Co-culture techniques find myriad applications in biology for studying natural or synthetic
interactions between cell populations. Such techniques are of great importance in synthetic …

Owing to the present global biodiversity crisis, the biodiversity–stability relationship and the
effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning have become major topics in ecology …

Environmental heterogeneity may be a general explanation for both the quantity of genetic
variation in populations and the ecological niche width of individuals. To evaluate this …

Phosphate starvation response (PSR) in nonmycorrhizal plants comprises transcriptional
reprogramming resulting in severe physiological changes to the roots and shoots and …

Trade‐offs in species performances of different ecological functions is one of the most
common explanations for coexistence in communities. Despite the potential for species …

Nitrous oxide (N 2 O) is mainly generated via nitrification and denitrification processes in
soils and subsequently emitted into the atmosphere where it causes well-known radiative …

A fundamental problem in biology is the evolutionary transition from single cells to
multicellular life forms,,. During this transition the unit of selection shifts from individual cells …

Correlations between the amount of energy received by an assemblage and the number of
species that it contains are very general, and at the macro-scale such species–energy …

Evolutionary processes generating biodiversity and ecological mechanisms maintaining
biodiversity seem to be diverse themselves. Conventional explanations of biodiversity such …