Microbial community dynamics during soil ecosystem development

Abstract

Ecological succession is a gradual change in community structure with time, which is important for proper functioning of an ecosystem. For a long time, plants have been in the limelight of community succession. In contrast, the significance of microbial succession in ecosystem development and various functions has only been emphasized relatively recently. Owing to the development of molecular methods over the last decade, microbial communities can now be investigated in much greater depths eventually leading to a better understanding of their contribution in an ecosystem. With the advent of these technologies, it is now possible to study primary succession in diverse ecosystems, such as wildfires, impact regions, paddy fields, etc. In this chapter, using case studies, we discuss the scenarios and successional paths that microbial communities follow in various ecosystems and show that the patterns are very similar in many. However, generalizing these to all communities at this time is not recommended, and the correlations observed from this analyses must be used with caution while applying them to a specific ecosystem.