ReviewFrontiers in microbiology2014
Trait-based approaches for understanding microbial biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
Review in Frontiers in microbiology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 164 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
164 citing papers in PubMed.
- Soil proteogenomics uncover microbial strategies for soil depth-specific carbon cycling under whole-soil warming conditions.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Challenges and Future Directives of Synthetic Biology in Engineering Plant-Microbe Partnerships for Sustainable Agriculture.Biotechnology and bioengineering · 2026Review
- Microbial ecology of shallow groundwater ecosystems.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Functional-Taxonomic Scaling Resolves Conflicting Average Genome Size Estimates Across Environmental Gradients.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Soil microbial growth rate, trophic strategy, and the oligotroph-copiotroph continuum.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Growth characteristics of natural microbial populations are skewed toward bacteria with low specific growth rates.Microbiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Disturbance intensity shapes universal and context-dependent functional traits in anaerobic microbiomes.Environmental science and ecotechnology · 2026Article
- Linking stochastic assembly to functional potential, redundancy, and trait patterns in bacterial communities.Microbiome · 2026Article
- Environmental effects on constructed wetland microbial diversity and function in the context of wastewater management.Microbiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Article
- Bacterial proteome foundation model enhances functional prediction from enzymes to ecological interactions.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- BactoTraits: a trait database for exploring functional diversity of bacterial communities.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Phylogenetic assembly of methanogenesis regulates methane yield in food-waste anaerobic digestion.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Predicting microbial community responses to disturbance using genome-resolved trait-based life-history strategies.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- D- and L-lactate consumers are taxonomically, biochemically, and energetically different.ISME communications · 2026Article
- annoreport: an interactive tool for metagenome annotation.Bioinformatics advances · 2026Article
- Cigarette Butts as an Emerging Urban Habitat Driving Microbial Niche Differentiation.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Article
- A Novel Protistan Trait Database Reveals Functional Redundancy and Complementarity in Terrestrial Protists (Amoebozoa and Rhizaria).Molecular ecology resources · 2026Article
- Genome-resolved analysis of colonization factor repertoires reveals ecological stratification in cervid gut microbiomes.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
104 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In ecology, biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research has seen a shift in perspective from taxonomy to function in the last two decades, with successful application of trait-based approaches. This shift offers opportunities for a deeper mechanistic understanding of the role of biodiversity in maintaining multiple ecosystem processes and services. In this paper, we highlight studies that have focused on BEF of microbial communities with an emphasis on integrating trait-based approaches to microbial ecology. In doing so, we explore some of the inherent challenges and opportunities of understanding BEF using microbial systems. For example, microbial biologists characterize communities using gene phylogenies that are often unable to resolve functional traits. Additionally, experimental designs of existing microbial BEF studies are often inadequate to unravel BEF relationships. We argue that combining eco-physiological studies with contemporary molecular tools in a trait-based framework can reinforce our ability to link microbial diversity to ecosystem processes. We conclude that such trait-based approaches are a promising framework to increase the understanding of microbial BEF relationships and thus generating systematic principles in microbial ecology and more generally ecology.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.